Trudy Gold
France: A Nation Divided

Trudy Gold | France: A Nation Divided | 08.03.21

- So, alright, so over to you. Thank you very much. We’re looking forward to hearing about “France, A Nation Divided,” right?

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• All right, thank you very much, Wendy. Well, good evening, everyone. And can I have the first slide please, Judy? Yeah. Having looked at Napoleon, now we’re going to look at France and the role of the Jew, and I’ve called it a divided France. And I’ve put up, France, if you can see just from this list how France keeps changing its mind between being a republic and being a monarchy. And this is within the space of just over 100 years. It starts with the Revolution and then of course Napoleon, there is a restoration of the monarchy. And then again, there is another revolution with a liberal monarch.

Then after 1848, the Year of Revolutions, a second republic, and then Louis Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon, takes over, the second empire and then the third republic. So the first point I want to make is that France, between 1789 and 1914, was a very, very divided country. And if we could see the next slide please, Judy. And this is how I’ve divided France up. And this is very much in common, the majority of historians would do it this way because on one level, France is the country of the Enlightenment. It is the first country in Europe to have an emancipation process. It based the Revolution, after all, on the ideas of the Enlightenment.

It is the country of the Rights of Man, very similar of course to the American Declaration of Independence, but also comes out of the Enlightenment. It’s the country of liberalism, republicanism, toleration, and that is one side. But on the other side, you have the power of the Catholic Church and an authoritarianism and a belief in the power of the Army, and a belief in the monarchy. So really what I’m going to suggest to you, through the whole of the 19th century, and I would suggest right up until today, France is two nations.

I mentioned yesterday what it’s like to wander around Paris, and I’m sure every one of you has drunk in the beauty of Paris. You know, the great boulevards that Haussmann built, the incredible art collections, the music, everything about Paris is seductive. But travel out of the capital and go to any small town or village and what’s the first thing you see as you drive in? It’s the crucifix or a shrine. France is a deeply Catholic country. And a few other points to make about France in the 19th century, because obviously what I’m actually going to be concentrating on is the Jews. Now, at the time of the Revolution, as we said yesterday, there were only 40,000 Jews in France. They were a tiny minority.

By 1880, there were only about 70,000 of them, why? Because Alsace-Lorraine had been returned to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War. So everything I’m going to talk about is against the backdrop of a very, very small percentage of the population. And the Jew is going to be caught in the middle of this extraordinary tussle for power. Which force in French society will succeed? Will it be the France of the Enlightenment, the Rights of Man, et cetera? Or will it be the power of the Church, authoritarianism, and the Army?

And when you think of the Rights of Man and liberalism, never forget in the ‘20s and '30s, France was the place that attracted many of the great writers, many of the great thinkers. I remember when I used to go to Paris, there’s Shakespeare’s bookshop on the Left Bank, and that was where all the expats used to hang out. It’s where, you know, it was run by, I think, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s niece. It’s where anyone who had any intellectual pretensions, in the end, they finished up in France. And if you think about it, the 19th century was no different. 1830s, 1840s, all sorts of individuals fighting for rights in their own countries, finished up in Paris.

Heinrich Heine lived much of his life in Paris. Karl Marx lived much of his life in Paris. It was very much a centre of intellectualism, it was a centre of radical thought, but it’s the other side as well. And it’s going to crystallise in the 19th century, unfortunately, over the issue of the Jew, who is the only non-Christian minority group of any number in France. Yes, the majority of the French were of course Catholic with a small Huguenot population, Calvinist, and then you had the Jew. So I want to emphasise, it’s very important, they’re a tiny number in the population. And what you’re going to see is the most extraordinary success story. I’d like now to look at the next slide.

Now, I threatened you with this yesterday. This is from Yuri Slezkine in his wonderful book of the Jews in the 20th century, and I’m just going to read the beginning of the book because it can just as easily be applied to the 19th century. And this is what he says, “The modern age is the Jewish Age, and the 20th century in particular is the Jewish Century. Modernization is about everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible.

“It’s about learning how to cultivate people and symbols, not fields and herds. It’s about pursuing wealth for the sake of learning, learning for the sake of wealth, and both wealth and learning for their own sakes. It’s about transforming peasants and princes into merchants and priests, replacing inherited privilege with acquired prestige, and dismantling social estates for the benefits of individuals, nuclear families and book-reading tribes, nations. Modernization, in other words, is about everyone becoming Jewish.”

Now that Slezkine’s way of saying modernity was made for the Jews. And as I said to you yesterday, I was also quoting Isaiah Berlin, with his notion of this people from another planet with their tradition of learning, landing on planet Earth and they fall in love with it. And we’ve already established from the grandson, Hedron, and how French Jewry really supted that from now on, they are going to be Frenchmen of the Jewish religion and they are going to be incredibly loyal to France. And anyone who comes into France from Eastern Europe, and that’s mainly after 1881, is going to be made into Frenchmen.

Just as in England, Anglo Jewry was doing exactly the same. But the 19th century, and of course we could spend months looking at France in the 19th century, but I’m teaching you Jewish history. It’s important to remember it’s volatile, it’s full of change. And the other point is that by the 1840s, Paris becomes the second largest city in Europe after London. And the other point is that you have the beginning of a huge industrialization process. Against the backdrop of insecure government, you have industrialization, you have the building of the railway networks, you have the peasantry moving into the towns to find bread.

And those of you who love literature, read Emile Zola, and I’ll be talking about him next week. Zola, look at some of the books he wrote. “Nana,” about prostitution, “Germinal,” about the lot of the minors. What was the real social reality of Paris that on one level it is the city, and as we move in, particularly after 1871, La Belle Epoque, as we move into the Third Republic, what’s it going to be about? It’s going to be about culture, but experimentation. Patrick’s been dealing quite a lot with you of what it was like in the art world, the music world in Paris.

Incredibly innovative, incredibly exciting. And on the other hand, for people who were going to be left behind, modernization is terrifying. And on one level, who was the most modernising? It was the Jewish community. Now let me say from the beginning, not every Jew who finished up in France became rich and famous, but there were quite a few who did. The point is it’s the traditional Jewish pattern of going into what we call visible occupation patterns. When I say the Jews on the edge of modernity, you’re going to see that there is a cadre of very wealthy Jewish bankers.

One of the wealthiest families in the world, the Rothschild family, of course. Baron de Hirsch, the German Jew who lived most of his time in Paris. The Ephrussis, the Reinachs, there are so many of these interlinked, the Oppenheims, intermarried families, many of Jewish extraction, was many of German extraction, which is going to be a problem after the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. And they are really funding modernization. Hirsch was called Turkenhirsch because he ran the whole of the railway network in the Turkish Empire. And you’re going to see other Jews involved in bringing electricity into Paris.

It’s going to be in the modern sciences, in the arts, and also in disciplines that are new and rather disquieting. Now, amongst the liberal Republicans, that’s fine. It’s only those who feel themselves to be left behind. And there was one character who’s going to play an incredible role and that’s going to be Pius IX. Can we see the next slide please, Judy? Here you see Pius IX. His dates are 1792 to 1878. He in fact took on the papal throne in 1845. It is the longest pontificate so far. And he was an incredibly conservative man.

When he first came to the throne, he wasn’t quite so conservative, but what happened to him was that he witnessed, in his pontificate, huge changes and he pushes the church into real conservatism. He was of course born into an Italian family, a family very closely associated with the papacy. He entered the papal guard in 1815. He was ordained in 1819, and his first mission was to South America to Chile. And he rises through the church. And in the beginning he was relatively liberal, but it’s once he takes over the papacy in order to combat liberalism and the oncoming socialism, particularly in France and Italy, that he’s going to become more and more conservative.

He saw the church under threat. He becomes more and more reactionary. He’s also the pope at the time of the 1848 Revolutions. I’ve often mentioned this to you. In 1848, the forces of liberalism really come to the fore, why? Look, all these European countries are industrialising, but they have despotic regimes. You know, Britain is always outside of this. It was Disraeli who said there will never be a revolution in Britain because of the fog. In 1848, all the British managed was a chartist demonstration in Hyde Park.

But there were 52 revolutions throughout Europe. There’s revolution in Vienna. In fact, the czar had to lend his cossacks to the young Franz Joseph. In Paris there’s revolution. And remember, France is considered to be the first flower of the Catholic church. And you have a very conservative pope who says the Jews are the enemies of Christendom because they worship mammon. So you have a pope on the papal throne who is actually more and more reactionary and sees the Jews…

Look, after all, Karl Marx was a Jew. Many of the young revolutionaries were Jewish. How did it happen? You see, countries are modernising, they’re industrialising. And in order to do these things, you need to create an articulate, clever middle class, an educated middle class. Well, if you are living under a despot regime, why on earth should you have no rights? And this is really, the pope is now trying to control it. And don’t forget also that the French Revolution have been secular. Communism is completely secular. Religion is the opium of the masses.

And Karl Marx, even though he hated his Jewish roots and said some of the most appalling things about the Jews, nevertheless, he was seen by the conservers as a Jew. So, this was the pope who came up with the doctrine of papal infallibility. The pope is always right because he has the hand of the Almighty on him. And also that Mary herself was born without sin. Not just the immaculate conception of Jesus, but Mary herself is born a virgin. And it must be said at the beginning of his reign, in his more liberal days, he did open the ghetto in Rome, the Roman ghetto. But later on he re-instituted it. And to give you a sort of instinct of what he was like, in 1858, the Mortara affair, which is a very, very famous case.

Mortara was a young boy who was living in the papal states, which was under the rule of the pope. And his wet nurse, Jewish boy, his wet nurse secretly baptised him and took him to the Jesuits and said, “This is a Catholic boy.” The parents tried to intervene to get him back. It became a huge core celeb. And what happens is the pope refuses to intervene. In fact, the papal nuncio, who is approached by two very interesting characters, Moses Montefiore representing Anglo Jewry and Adolphe Cremieux, who I’m going to talk about in a minute, representing French Jewry.

Two very important, interesting men. The papal nuncio for foreign affairs actually said to them, “How much money did the Rothschilds have to pay the sultan for the firman?” Now what are they talking about? And of course, what happened to the Mortara boy is he was never returned and he finished up a priest. Can you imagine the agony of the family? No, he’s referring to an affair in 1840 when the French consul in Damascus stirs up a blood libel. And it’s the first blood libel in the Arab world, in the Muslim world. And it led to horrific scenes in Damascus.

It goes all the way to the centre of the Turkish Empire. And in the end, Montefiore visits the sultan and obtains from him a firman, which said that the blood libel didn’t happen. So basically this is the kind of atmosphere, it’s febrile. So ironically, this is a pope, who in the year 2000, was beatified. I find this absolutely fascinating. In the Catholic church, one of the greatest things that could happen is, of course, to become a saint. Because if you become a saint, you go straight to the the Almighty. Now, in the Vatican, there are two stages, beatification and canonization.

To be beatified, you have to go before the devil’s advocate and your life is weighed up. And in the year 2000, this man who said the Jews are the enemies of Christendom, was beatified. So, you have on the papal throne, on the one side of the argument, a pope who said that France was in the hands of the Jews and the Freemasons, this tiny population. He’s worried about France, he’s worried about radicalism, and he targets the Jews. So can we go on, please, if you don’t mind?

Now, there was an individual called Adolphe Cremieux. Because this is the other side of France, Adolphe Cremieux, his dates are 1796 to 1800. He’s a very, very interesting man. And it’s going to show you also how French Jews could progress in French society. He was born in Nimes to a very wealthy family. He became a lawyer. And after the 1830 Revolution, he comes to Paris. Super smart, he formed collections with all sorts of individuals with political influence, including Louis Philippe himself. You see, in Paris there were salons. Many wealthy characters had salons, which brought together politicians, financiers, intellectuals, and this is where they got to know each other.

And Cremieux was a very interesting figure in these salons. He was very much a defender of liberal causes. And he was also an interesting journalist. So he fought for freedom both in the courts and into the press. He was elected to the French Assembly as a deputy in 1842 and he remains there right up until his death. He also was vice president of the Consistoire Central des Israelite, which I talked about yesterday, how Napoleon had set up these consistories to control Jewish life in France. So he works in the Jewish community, he also works in the outside world. He was a supporter of Louis Napoleon.

Louis Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon, in 1848, after the revolutions, he comes to Paris, he becomes a deputy and he becomes president. And in the early years, Cremieux was a great supporter of his, but then he took the Crown and that was against everything that Cremieux and the liberals believed in and so he broke with him. Cremieux was arrested, he was imprisoned. This happened to many of these liberals. And on release, he led a very private life until 1869 when he’s elected as a Republican delegate for Paris. And of course it’s in 1870 that you’ve got the Franco-Prussian War and everything goes wrong for France.

He becomes the Minister of Justice in 1870, and he is made a senator for life. So, he is a very important figure. Now, one of the founders of the Alliance and chairman, president of the Alliance in 1864. In 1870 when he was Minister of Justice, the Cremieux Decree, he granted full citizenship for the Jews of Algeria. And for the Jews of Algeria, France becomes la patrie. And of course, that’s one of the reasons you have so many Sephardic Jews in France, but they are given full citizenship by Cremieux. He didn’t give it to the Muslims, and it led to a great upswing in anti-Jewish prejudice amongst the French colonials in Algeria and also amongst the Muslims.

But I want to talk a little bit about the Alliance. It was founded in Paris in 1860 to safeguard the rights of Jews worldwide. Now this is interesting. French Jews are Frenchmen of the Jewish religion, but this is the opening of the appeal to all the Israelites. This is to create the Israelite Universelle. It’s a little like the Board of Deputies, but in many ways far more influential, and it’s going to be in charge of schools. Just think of all the schools, and I think I mentioned this yesterday, those of you who come from the Sephardic world, the majority of you will speak French or your parents did because they were educated in an Alliance school.

And money for the Alliance was got from Jewish financiers. And this is what it says, “Israelites, if scattered over the whole surface of the earth and intermingling with all nations, you remain attached to the old religion of your ancestors however weak be the bond that unites you there. If you do not deny your religion, if you do not hide your worship, if you do not blush at being Israelites, if you hold that unity is strength, that although we are members of various nations, we may still be one nationality in sentiment, hope and expectations.

If you think that by legal means, by the invincible power of right and reason without exciting any trouble, without frightening any power, without raising the indignance of any party except that of ignorance, bigotry, fanaticism, you would obtain much and impart much by your zealous and intelligent actions. So basically what they’re saying, you know, how does this fit in with being complete citizens of France? What is he saying? What are the members of the Alliance saying? He becomes the president, remember. And it’s he who went with Montefiore to interfere over the Mortara affair.

And you’re going to see him often involved in these kind of cases. And also, he’s promoting French culture, but he believed it was the right of Jews in France and the duty of Jews in France to help their more unfortunate brotherhood in other countries. So he is recognising that there is some sort of outside tie, but he sees himself very much as a Frenchman, a Frenchman of the Liberal Republic. Can we see the next slide please? Now this is an interesting man. Look how he’s dressed.

This is Zadoc Kahn, who’s the chief rabbi of France. Now, in 1889, it was 100 years since the French Revolution and there was huge ceremonies all over France because it’s the time of the Third Republic. And this is what Zadoc Kahn said, "We have adopted the customs and traditions of our country, which has generously adopted us today. And today, thanks to God, there are no longer any but Frenchmen in France. France will not repudiate her past, her traditions and her principles, which constitute the best of her moral patrimony.

As for us, we will continue to love our country and to bear witness in all circumstances as to our gratitude and devotion.” And this is from Rabbi Abraham Bloch, who was, he was the chief rabbi of Lyon. And at the same time he said this, remember it’s 1889, 100 years since the Revolution, “The Jews have enriched the arts, letters, politics and the military, industry and commerce with a apathy and love and not without success, better to show how they cherish their new home and to make themselves worthy of her love and protection.”

So what you have is he is the principal representative on the Consistoire. He is the chief rabbi of France. His background is very interesting. After the death of Crimea in 1880, he really becomes the official leader of French Jewry. And he came from a poor background in Alsace, but if you were bright, his father had been on the Sanhedrin of Napoleon, and he starts out as the chief rabbi of the Lower Rhine district. He was educated in Strasbourg and after the Franco-Prussian War, you’ve got to remember a lot of Jews moved from that area, became German, into France, and it’s going to cause a lot of problems for them later on.

In 1881, he is chief rabbi when you have a mass exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe. This is part of that huge exodus where over 40% of the Jews of Eastern Europe flee. And the Alliance and all the Jewish charity organisations very much run by the major Jewish bankers and financiers, a sort of cousinhood, they tried to limit the numbers just as the English Jews did. Baron de Hirsch set up plans for colonisation in Argentina and it was Kahn who was the intermediary.

They would help Jews in trouble, but they didn’t want to swell the numbers just as both Baron de Hirsch also did not want to help Herzl with Zionism because he felt that he was a citizen of Europe, but Zadoc Kahn was slightly different. He was the head of Hibbat Zion in France, which brought him into contact with Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Baron Edmond de Rothschild was funding Jewish settlement in Paris, or rather, he was funding a wine growing business. He was helping poor Jews in Palestine. He was not a Zionist. And so what we’re having here is kind of the nuance of identity where Zadoc Kahn, he was probably more to Herzl’s position than any of the others.

But because really he was answerable to the wealthy and the wealthy of course found Zionism to be a huge enigma, because what I’m trying to give you now is the atmosphere. Because what is going to happen is that the whole fault line between the liberal side of France and the reactionary side of France is to burst in the Jewish situation and it bursts in a couple of huge financial scandals. So just a recap, the huge events are the Revolutions of 1848 and then in 1871, the Franco-Prussian War. There was a commune set up in Paris, the Communard and in the end it was put down.

One of the reasons Sacre-Coeur was established was to say sorry to the church for, if you like, violating with the Communard. France was humiliatingly defeated. Louis Napoleon lost its Sudan and it ushers in a republic. But it was also a humiliating defeat for the Army in the Franco-Prussian War, the great honour of the French officer class is now in the dust. Germany is on the rise. And just remember how many Jews living in France, there aren’t a large number of Jews anyway, but many of them come from Germany or what becomes Germany, Alsace-Lorraine.

So consequently they’re suspicious anyway and it ties up with a huge amount of insecurity in France. It ties up with really economic stagnation, a huge fine to the French from the Germans, demoralisation, losing colonies, losing power to Germany. So the right side of France, by that I mean the right wing side of France, the monarchists, Louis Napoleon flees to London. His wife, the Empress Eugenie, is rescued by an American dentist and she finishes up in Cyrnos just outside Croydon. So fascinating what happens to some of these characters. So you have the Republic and that republic is going to deal with some terrible situations.

But on the other hand, as Patrick has illustrated beautifully, it’s also explodes with talent and ideas. We hear it so often in history that when society is fractured, an awful lot of people suffer. And you need to look at what elements in society are suffering most. It’s really the working classes, the poor working classes, but also the lower middle classes who lose their place, who dream of a world that’s pre-industrial. And who seems to be the major beneficiaries? It’s the Jews. And it’s all going to explode in a couple of huge financial scandals. And the first one is of course the Panama Canal Scandal. And at the centre of it was a man called Jacques de Reinach, who was the uncle of Theodore Reinach, who I’m going to talk about next week because he is one of the great characters of French history.

He of course was the one of the great art collectors, which is talked about in that wonderful book. I can’t remember the title, I’m sure one of… “The House of Fragile Things” Because many of these wealthy Jewish bankers had also become great art collectors. They fall in love with the art of France. They fall in love with the culture of France. And this man, Jacques de Reinach, he’s one of the richest men in France and he is the uncle. And by the way, his other nephew was a lead, was a lead defender of Jewish rights.

So, Jacque de Reinach, he’s a French banker of German origin. He’s the son of Clementine Oppenheim and Alfonse de Reinach. Do you see how many of these families are interlinked? You know, you’re probably talking about… And they’re also interlinked with some of the great American Jewish families. There’s an interlinking, of course the Rothschilds and there’s about a dozen very important banking families in France, in Germany, in Britain and they all intermarry amongst themselves. So in England it was called the cousinhood.

Now he settles in, his family are very wealthy. Can we go on to have a look at his picture? Thank you, that’s Jacques de Reinach. He’s very, very wealthy. He’s the son of Clementine Oppenheim, as I said. The family settled in Paris in the late '50s and in 1863 he founds a bank, Kohn-Reinach, with his brother-in-law, Edouard Kohn, who’s an international financier. He’s naturalised as a French citizen and he makes his fortune in the railway business.

You know, he sets up a lot of the railway network in France, particularly in the suburbs going down to the south of France. He runs lots of different railways. He had a huge townhouse in the Parc Monceau, I’m sure so many of you, “When can we go ever back to Paris?” Remember the beautiful Parc Monceau. And his salon was a great centre for political, financial and artistic Paris. He also bought a chateau in Picardy. And he becomes the mayor of the local town because he has the largest, you know, he is the most important man in the region.

Now the Panama Canal Company, Ferdinand de Lesseps, that brilliant engineer who of course had built the Suez Canal, which Disraeli had bought behind the backs of the French and the Russians. The Panama Canal Company built the Panama Canal. It was the largest financial scandal of the 19th century. 800,000 French people, ordinary investors, including 15,000 single women. Why so many single women? Think of all the wars, women who are investing their life savings.

They lost their life savings, because what had happened was ministers, and it included Clemenceau, later president of the Republic. What had happened was they had, if you like, covered up the scandal for quite a few years and in the end it breaks. The nationalists in particular, the nationalists, the monarchists, they talk about the corruption of the liberal republic, the decadent liberal republic. I mean, Patrick’s also talked to you about the Simi or is it Simi, the sexual side of Paris, the kind of the pleasure capital.

There’s the horror of Nana, but there’s also the grand horizontal, the courtesans, the theatre, the Moulin Rouge. I don’t have to go on, the class of beguile, you all know the story, but you can imagine how the French conservatives ate it all and it’s summed up, if you like, by the decadence of the Third Republic and the decadence of characters like Reinach. Now why is he involved? Because he was the financial advisor to the Panama Canal and he was implicated in bribing members of the General Assembly, some of whom went to jail.

Now Hannah Arendt goes as far as to say, quote, “It was so important in the development of French antisemitism due to the involvement of Jews, two Jews of German origin.” Now what happened was Reinach is going to commit suicide in 1892 because of the scandal. And before his death, he actually gave a list of those MPs who’d been bribed to a man called Edouard Drumont, who had an antisemitic paper called “La Libre Parole,” a little bit more about it in a moment, if he covered up Reinach’s role in it all. He would in fact not mention him. And it was this act that made “La Libre Parole,” into one of the most important newspapers in France.

I haven’t even mentioned the real term antisemitism yet. And the other man, and was he implicated or wasn’t he, was another man of German Jewish origin, Cornelius Herz. Can we see his picture please? Yeah, he is a really interesting character. His dates are 1845 to 1898. Now remember, this is the great financial scandal of the 19th century, you know, nearly a million people lose everything. You’re talking about millions and millions and millions of the equivalent of dollars. It’s huge.

His parents were German Jews who had immigrated to America. He was obviously one of these extraordinary characters 'cause he’s incredibly clever, but he’s also very brave. He joins the American Army, he becomes a leftenant. He goes off to Europe after the American Civil War. He studies in Heidelberg and he finishes up at the School of Medicine in Paris. In the Franco-Prussian War, he fights for France. He becomes a Knight of the Legion of Honour. He then goes back to America where he becomes the, this will interest the Americans on board, because he becomes the chief medical officer at a hospital in New York, the Mount Sinai Hospital, which was funded by American Jewish financiers.

He specialised in nervous diseases. This was very much the new field of thought, think Freud, he’s going to erupt onto the scene later on, and he becomes interested in electricity, think shock treatment. He was also a very clever scientist. So this is a man of many, many parts and he also had access to great wealth. He was very well connected. He founded the California Electric Works and then he returns to Paris. He becomes the head of the movement extending the use of electricity in France. He worked with the French government.

Much of the finance came from Alphonse de Rothschild, the son of James, the youngest brother of the founder of the Rothschild Dynasty. The most famous of his brothers was Nathan. So we’re into the third generation Rothschilds now. And in the 1881 exhibition in Paris, it’s the first Exposition of Electricity in France and scientific reviews, he edits them, he writes about it. He becomes obsessed with the possibility of electricity and he also was involved in the founding of, for the working of the state, telephonic telegraph lines which connected 36,000 communes in France.

You see, this is a Jew good at science, on the sharp edge of modernity. Do people want railways? Do people want the telephone? Do people want change? Well, this was sorted out, believe it or not, with a capital of 100 million Francs. He was awarded the Legion Honour in 1878. He represented France in America at the International Congress about electricity. And he becomes a commander of the Legion Honour. He founds the Paris Electric Light Company. He invents a telephone system that gives far better transmission of voice over long distance. He’s great. He works mainly with Reinach and with Alphonse de Rothschild.

So he is very much part of that circle. He becomes world famous. He’s one of the most famous men in the world. He receives all sorts of honours. He receives an honour in Bavaria because he’s extending ideas. This is the world of modernity. In Italy he’s one of the most famous people in the world in his time. He has a permanent position in the French world of politics. He’s a very important guest at any salon. Now, he is wrongly accused of being involved in the Panama Canal Company. He was in fact, imprisoned for three and a half years. Why do I say wrongly in prison? Because eight years after his death, he dies in England, he comes out of prison, he actually dies in Bournemouth and eight years after his death, he is exonerated.

And those of you who are interested in such things, he is buried in Willesden Cemetery. So the point is, two German Jews are accused of being part of the biggest financial scandal that France knew in the 19th century. And in 1882, the Catholic General Bank collapsed. Now there were no Jewish finances on the Catholic General Bank, but the director said it’s all Jewish financier’s fault. And again, thousands and thousands of people, Catholics lost their life savings. And there’ve been a terrible stock market crash back in 1873, the linked economies. The stock exchange in France was called the Jewish Bourse, only a Bourse, beg your pardon, only about a third of the bankers were in fact Jewish.

But the point is, this is where you begin to see the rise of the notion, can a Jew really be a Frenchman? Because what is happening, Jew hatred is one thing, Catholic Jew hatred, the hatred of Jews religiously is turning and it comes out of all sorts of strange biological and pseudoscientific ideas, stealing mainly from Charles Darwin that certain races are better able to survive, et cetera. And out of it comes the view that a Jew cannot be a Frenchman because a Jew belongs to a separate alien race. And one of the people behind these kind of views is a man called Alphonse Toussenel. Can we see his picture please, Judy?

Yeah, this is Alphonse de Toussenel. He was a French naturalist, a writer, a journalist. In fact, I know that Professor Geens is going to be talking about these ideas when he lectures to us tomorrow at half past seven on English time. And that’s his famous book, “Les Juifs, Rois de L'Epoque” The Jews, Kings of the Epoch. Alright? He was in fact a utopian socialist. He was a disciple of Charles Fourier and Proudhon. He was very much a man of the working classes. He believed that the working classes were being exploited by an alien race. He was quite an important character. He becomes the editor-in-chief of the newspaper La Paix.

And in his book, “The Jews, the Kings of the Epoch,” this is what he has to say, the French nation has, and this is a book that went into so many different editions. It’s a very important book. He’s talking about the government being weak. He’s saying that we have no real character in this country and he talks about how the Jews are now beginning to take everything over. “French justice, so harsh towards the poor, considering accusing the bank, why don’t you consider the bankers of Judea, London and Geneva of the crime of ransacking the public treasury?

In foreign affairs France has fallen to the level of a second rate power, but behind it all are the Jews.” He also hates the English. And he introduces this sort of biological racism. The same thing is happening in France. The same thing is happening in the Habsburg Empire. It’s a much lesser to an extent in Britain. But don’t forget also, this is the time of the beginnings of eugenics, which also in its own way is just as evil, the notion that people come for different bloodlines, but he really puts his stamp down. But it’s actually left to another man to really popularise modern antisemitism. Can we see the next slide, please?

And here you see, what a kind benign looking face he has, that is Edouard Drumont. His dates are 1844 to 1917. He was born in France, in Paris, beg your pardon? His father died when he was very young so he had to support himself. He was also very bright. He first went into government service, later becomes a journalist and a writer and one of his books actually won a prize for the French Academy. The French Academy, you know, it’s very important, the 40 Immortals. And when I look at the Dreyfus affair with you, you’re going to see that quite a few of those who were so hostile to Dreyfus were at the top echelons of French intellectual society.

Now he believed that the Jews were responsible. He very much took over from Toussenel. He was a man of the people. He becomes an incredibly populous writer. And in 1886, he writes a book called “La juive France.” And this is how it begins. “The Jews possess half of the capital in the world.” And basically he’s saying that the Jews control France. And he says, “What you’ve got to do is get rid of them, and you’ve got to confiscate all their money. These people are really evil. They can never have the instincts of Frenchmen.

So consequently, these are our enemy.” Now, when he also created a newspaper called “La Libre Parole” and the slogan was “French for the French.” And at its heights, “La Libre Parole” was a daily paper bought by 300,000 people. Here you see some front covers of “La Libre Parole.” I don’t have to really say anymore, do I? Now, he also enters the French Assembly. In 1898, an antisemitic activist, a man called Max Regis, who was a journalist and politician, he was the mayor of Algeria, he endorsed Drumont as one of the representatives for up for Algiers to the French General Assembly.

In fact, of the six Algerian deputies, four were part of an antisemitic group. And he later on was sued for accusing another deputy of taking a bribe from the Rothschilds. As I said, Drumont exploited the Panama Canal Company scandal to make “La Libre Parole” one of the most famous papers in France. So it’s all going to erupt into the Dreyfus affair. In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jew on the French general staff, is accused of selling secrets to the Germans and it is going to cause a scandal that doesn’t really ever leave France. Dreyfus, and I’ll talk a little bit about it on next week, but the point about the Dreyfus affair, because I have lectured on it in the past.

So after the lockdown is over, you have that, oh, there are so many books on the Dreyfus affair. If the Panama Canal Company scandal was the scandal of 19th century France, the Dreyfus affair was about the soul of France. And you’re going to find that every intellectual, every one of note, be they the right, the fascist right, the communist left is going to take sides over the Dreyfus affair. And at the heart, as I said, the problem for the Jew, this tiny minority with huge visibility profile, at the heart is the story of a Jew who cannot possibly be loyal to France because he is a Jew and it’s as simple as that really.

And I have colleagues who teach the Dreyfus affair at university, and they don’t so much teach it as a Jewish affair, they teach it as which force in French society will succeed? Will it be the liberal republic or will it be in fact the extremist right? And in the end, which force does succeed because it’s going to play out in Vichy. You know, it’s fascinating how France got away with being the first flower of resistance. I think Patrick’s already talked to you about that because in the end it was the Vichy police that rounded up French Jews, and France’s record is quite appalling.

And you can actually trace it back from this period of history to really today, because today, what is the position of Jews in France that if you like, the fault line does seem to be around the Jewish community. So obviously I’ve covered a vast amount of territory. I’m not talking about the history of France, really. I’m talking about the history of the Jews of France. But I know a lot of you have a lot of knowledge about France so I just thought it would be important.

But I should also say, and we will be talking about France before the First World War, it’s very important that period. And also in the interwar period, and yes, on liberal side there were two Jewish prime ministers. There are many Jews in the government, but there’s still this fault line.

So I think, Judy, I can stop there and shall we have a look at some questions?

Q&A and Comments

Q: “At what point did France and England become allies and not enemies?” A: Oh, that is a wonderful question, Arlene. France, if you think about it, there was Hundred Years’ War. I’m not going to answer that question because I think you can make it up for yourself. France and Britain, look, Britain and France were on the same, well, no, Digor came to London in the Second World War. They were allies in the First World War. They fought over empire, they fought over colonies. And there were English kings who lay claim to France, so.

Q: Paul Greek, “Will you please put up the timeline slide again as I didn’t have a chance to absorb it?” A: Perhaps we could put it on, it will definitely go on the web. Judy, can it go on next week’s as you did with the questions? Is it possible?

• Yes.

• Yes, thank you.

• Trudy, yes, it’s fine.

• Okay, Paul, did you hear that? We can put it on my next lecture, it will be on it.

Q: “What happened to the one in three who married out?” A: They disappeared. Look, French Jewry was disappearing of its own volition before the war. You know, today it’s one of the largest communities in the world, but the majority of Jews are Sephardi Jews from the the old French Empire. Yes, this is John. Yes, this is very important.

“Haussmann’s boulevards were built largely to enable the French Army to mow down the rebellious mob when necessary.” Yes, those incredible boulevards. You know, it’s a very interesting point about France.

“Please spell out the book’s author’s name, closed captions didn’t get it.” I don’t know what book you’re talking about. You’re talking about Yuri Slezkine’s book?

Oh, yes, this is Alan. “Trudy, you mentioned the Huguenots. Many came to the Cape due to discrimination by the Catholic church. And today there’s a lovely monument in the most beautiful town called Franschhoek in the heart of the Cape Winelands.” Yes, the French Huguenots had a terrible time. Of course you have the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1588 and of course some came to London, the lacemakers and settled in England. And of course, this is interesting, they were an incredibly industrious group. It does seem that when people are persecuted, they do, I don’t know, Jeremy and I are going to lecture on whether antisemitism is the key to Jewish survival. It’s an interesting point, Matt.

“Not sure that the religious Jews were on the edge of modernity. The accomplished Jews tended to be more secular compared to Catholicism.” Now that’s an interesting point, Ted. Now let’s be careful. The religious Jews were on the edge of modernity. Now the bulk of religious Jews are living in Eastern Europe. Everything I’m talking about now is Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. When I talk about emancipation being completed in Europe by 1878, it doesn’t touch the Russian empire and the Russian empire encompassed Poland. So consequently, the bulk of the religious Jews were not on the edge of modernity. Of course they weren’t. Many of them saw it as a problem. Now what happens?

“Accomplished Jews tended to be more secular.” You know, Reinach, no, was it Reinach? Yes, he was one of the sponsors of the Great Synagogue in the Rue Kapani. They had their synagogue, but they were wearing their Judaism more and more lightly. I think that is true. And of course its reform is going to be born in Germany. It’s the law of the modern world, isn’t it? It’s, can we walk the tightrope? Can you be a Jew at home and a man in society? These are the questions. This is Dennis.

“When Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh lived and studied in France, was asked to comment on the influence of the revolution. And he’s reputed to have said, ‘It’s too early to tell.’” It’s an interesting point, yeah. Oh, sorry, thank you, Paul.

Chartist revolutions on Kennington Common. Yes, they didn’t make it to Hyde Park. Thank you, yeah, it is fascinating, isn’t it, that how in Victorian England, it was so much more muted? You know what Disraeli said? He was a very pragmatic individual. He said, “When the cottages are rested, the state home should tremble.” And the reality of wealth in France, which I should have mentioned, that the reality was really with the nobility. And who were the nobility? Many of them were the nobility from Napoleon’s times. You know, a lot of the old aristocracy had been murdered in the revolution. And the Jews were not the richest people in France. There were a few incredibly wealthy ones. But again, it’s the outsider. Are you really French?

This is from Bonnie. “My Romanian grandparents, may they rest in peace, and thousands of other Jews were funded by Baron de Hirsch to leave Eastern Europe and become homesteaders in Western Canada. These Eastern European white collar workers had to pivot to become farmers in a harsh Canadian environment. They were blessed to escape the pogroms and the Holocaust.” Yes, you see, Bonnie, nobody could have predicted the future. Baron de Hirsch was one of the greatest philanthropists of Jews in the world, and he supported Jews in South America. He supported them in Canada. He realised he had to get them out of Russia, out of the Russian Empire, which of course encompassed Poland and Lithuania and Latvia, Ukraine. It’s all part of the Russian Empire. And yes, this saved their lives.

The Jews, the 40% who got out, those Jews who came to Paris, of course many of them were pushed on, but many, in fact, the majority of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were not the original French. And that’s for another, not the original French Jews, but Eastern European immigrants, and that’s another presentation for another time because it’s quite complex. But yeah, yeah. Baron de Hirsch was a great philanthropist. He believed passionately in helping Jews in trouble. But what he didn’t believe in is a Jewish state. You know, don’t forget that Herzl was in Paris.

He arrives in Paris before the Dreyfus affair and he writes in his diary, you know, despite the Panama Canal Company collapse, despite all the antisemitism, he actually says France is the centre of the civilised world. It will take the rest of the world 100 years to achieve what the French have achieved. He fell in love with France as so many people do. I mean, to lighten it a bit, think about Hemingway in Paris. He was with the American Army in the Second World War and what did he do? He went off to liberate the wine cellar at the Ritz and the same bartenders before the war. And evidently he got all the drinks ready.

And this is from Audrey. “My Romanian relatives ended up in Saskatchewan in the early 1900s and were hosts to my father’s family from Romania when they came in ‘26. Never heard of Baron de Hirsch sponsorship. How would I find out if he sponsored my family too?” The best thing to do is to get on a genealogy site and all you’ve got to put in is Jewish gen. I know we’ve got people on the channel we’ve got who know an awful lot more about genealogy than I do and maybe they can put some help out for you. You’ll have to do… You see, I don’t know offhand whether there was a Baron de Hirsch… You need to find out where Baron de Hirsch’s colonies were. And then you need to marry them up with your family.

Q: “Why were many revolutionaries Jewish when the Jews were the ones spearheading the modernism of Paris and benefiting financially?” A: What a logical question, Bobby. Why do you think? Because Jews are like everybody else, maybe more so they say, and because a disproportionate number of revolutionaries were always Jewish, why? They come from this other planet, they see the world and they don’t like it. They can’t go back to the world of Judaism because they’ve left it. It’s too stifling for them. But they see the corruption of the world. So many of the revolutionary leaders from country to country to country were born Jewish. It’s one of the problems. That’s why you get this horrific notion of the Jewish plot. If financiers are Jews, if communists are Jews, well, they must rule the world. The fact that the Holocaust is the greatest example of powerlessness in modern history doesn’t stop people still talking about Jewish power conspiracies. You know, power means Army, power means a sovereign state. Yes, there have been many Jews with influence, but the Nazis even got hold of a Rothschild. Never forget that.

Q: “Is it not strange that Cremieux’s wife secretly baptises their children?” A: No, it isn’t. You see, this is another problem. They believe, look, it’s one of the issues. If you fall in love with something and then you find out that something doesn’t really respect who you are, you begin to question yourself. There’s a horrific expression called Jewish self-hatred. And, you know, I could teach a course on it, how many Jews were affected by it? Because they so desperately wanted to belong to beautiful France. The liberal side, you know, even Emile Zola, some of the great figures on the liberal left, they didn’t like Jews much. I mean, Wendy before was talking to me about Napoleon. There’s that terribly cynical quotation, “Antisemitism is to dislike Jews more than is necessary.”

And if you want my shorthand answer to this, because why? Well, to me it’s quite simple. It goes back to Christianity and the deisite, it’s the deisite that really pushes the Jews into artificial occupation patterns. It makes them international, it makes them mobile. It makes them have to be capable of leaving from country to country, you know? And it’s that that mark them out. As I said, many times you don’t find it in Hindu, India, you don’t find it in China, this sort of hatred. It’s the world of Christianity and now unfortunately, the world of Islam, which has taken on a lot of the deisite by the way.

But look, of course there’s economic and social pressures. Frankly, antisemitism, if you’re going to take the cynical view, is at a reasonable level when there is economic, social, and political stability. It’s the same with any prejudice. It’s not much fun to be Black. It’s not much fun to be any minority group when there’s instability in a society. One of the things that breaks my heart though, and I mean that, is that many other of the minority groups do not see us as one of them. They see us as the oppressor, which is absolutely, I think the greatest sleight of hand and it’s tragic.

And this is from Dr. Rosen. “The , absolutely, my father is from Egypt. And that is what he spoke as a Dino, an Arabic also.” Yes, so your father from an Alliance school, yeah. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that they’re spreading French culture.

Mitzi, “People today are still accusing Jews of Jewry loyalty. A member of Congress said, 'Jews are more dedicated to Israel than America.’ She had not been called out for her remarks by most significant members of party, some of whom are Jews.” Well, don’t raise your head too far above the parapet because then maybe the guns won’t get you. Look, the question you have to ask yourself. Is dual loyalty acceptable? I thought, certainly in the heyday of the ‘60s, hyphenated identity in America, Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, African-Americans, American-Jews, I don’t know. Economic, social and political chaos, a pandemic. And people are becoming isolated, becoming…

Look, when things get hard, we become tribal, don’t we? We go into our group, our family, our group. Who do we identify as of us? And the tragedy of the Jew, I mean, the whole notion of the scapegoat is actually a Jewish invention. Yom Kippur, throw the sins on the black goat, sacrifice the black goat. Yeah, it’s interesting though. There’s another side to it. You know what Freud said? He said, “I could never have achieved what I did if I had belonged to the compact majority.”

That also ties up, I think, with the so-called Jewish success story. Look, as I said, be careful. Not every Jew becomes rich and famous, but a disproportionate number of them did. Now, of course, post '45, the world has changed so much because now you have a Jewish state. And of course if you look at the centres of population, and I think many of you will remember that when Netanyahu visited Paris after those appalling massacres, what did he say to the community? He said, “Come home.” Interesting.

Q: “How would you explain the lack of desire to help Jews coming in? He was a rabbi. Very hard to understand.” A: Look, it was actually, he was… Look, he was controlled by the rich. The rich were prepared to help them go on from Paris to America but they didn’t want them in their backyard because they were too foreign. Some of them settled, but the bulk of them were… And the same thing happened in England, by the way, and in Germany. Look, every Jewish community feels insecure. They settle themselves in. There’s a wonderful letter from one of the Rothschilds to the Jewish free school in 1898 writing to the parents and telling them not to send their kids to hadir, but to send them onto the football field, make them into Englishmen. You know what prejudice is, you’re scared of it. It takes an incredible amount of courage to put your head above the parapet.

“Adolphe Cremieux was the first Jew to be given a state funeral.” Yes, John, I should have mentioned that. Yeah, had his two children baptised. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, I mentioned the House of Fragile things. Yes, of course, because Reinach’s nephew was a great collector, as were the Ephrussis. I’ll be talking a bit about that on whenever I’m lecturing again, which I think is on Monday.

Q: “Drumont was beyond being an anti, he was an antisemite. Was he a murderous antisemite?” A: No, he didn’t murder, but on the other hand, he was an incendiary antisemite because during the Dreyfus affair, La Libre Parole, you know, there were 55 different anti-Jewish demonstrations put pogroms in France around the time of the second trial in 1898. And when Dreyfus was publicly dishonoured, it was La Libre Parole that had whipped up the mob against the Jew.

Q: "Were the Jewish French bankers more interested in expanding the rights of Jews or expanding the influence of France or both?” A: Oh, that is a very difficult question. I think you have to look at all the cases. I think like most people are interested in their own families, but most of these bankers were incredible philanthropists and they did an awful lot of good, they were in love with France. Somebody like Baron de Hirsch is a complicated character because he was really a European and the Rothschilds, they were Europeans really, you know, they were friends of kings and princes. They had their castles, their chateaus. I mean, Reinach had one, just think about it, he had a townhouse in Parc Monceau, he had a chateau. They emulated the French aristocracy, I suppose.

“In the Book of Fragile Things, all the other Jew haters are well described.” Yeah, thank you. “Any impact on the Jewish community in France of the lost bit…” Oh, yes. Yeah, look, you got to remember the Dreyfus case is fascinating because Dreyfus’s family moved to Paris because they loved France. When Alsace-Lauren was returned to Germany, they went to Paris, quite a few Jews did. So they were loyal, look, Dreyfus was a loyal Frenchman. He joined the Army. He came from a wealthy family, but he wasn’t in the same league as the Ephrussis or the characters I’ve been talking about.

“How many presidents were…” I don’t know what that means, “How many presidents worked for the Rothschild?” Oh, that’s in, what you mean for the Rothschild Bank? I know that the current guy has, and boy does he get into trouble for it. Isn’t it fascinating? Yes, the Rothschild is still an interesting family, but they’re such philanthropists. It’s a burden. It must be such a terrible burden to have the name Rothschild. They’re great philanthropists, but it’s so easy because they were an international banking family. I suppose that’s where the conspiracy idea comes from. And also, so many of these families are interlinked by marriage. Mitterrand, was it? Mitterrand and the current one.

Q: “Why was it in France so many intellectuals actually believed Jews were terrible?” A: I think, you know, Jennifer, brains has got nothing to do with prejudice. And I think if you actually want to look at, I think, the most extraordinary example I would give you would be the Anzacs group and, you know, the murder squads, the SS murder squads, the majority of them had PhDs from top German universities and one of the leaders was a pastor. And if you think of the men who sat around the table at Lanse, two-thirds of them were lawyers with doctorates in law. So education has got nothing, and intellectuality has got very little to do with decency. Now, the ideas of the Enlightenment was that if you educated everybody to a level, they would realise that there were moral truths in the world. But are they absolute truths? You know, these are the ideas of the Enlightenment.

So I think Jennifer, tragically, brain, intellectual achievement does not make you a good human being. Now what does? That’s going to the realms of psychology now. It’s interesting to study rescuers because in any situation, and again, one has to look for the common denominator. I think the problem is that we’ve, look, the 19th and 20th century and the 21st century, we have moved so fast technologically. But how much have we improved since we came out of the caves? That’s my question. We haven’t, we don’t know enough about what makes the human psyche, and this is why it’s so interesting to think of psychologically. Why do people hate Jews? Why do people hate anyone who’s different? Why do they hate gays? Why do they hate ROMO? Why do they hate Blacks?

You know what real prejudice is is you take someone, and particularly if you hate them, and you ascribe every bad instinct to the whole group. But prejudice is usually at a reasonable level when people have got full bellies and their place in the sun. It’s only when society is under threat. That’s what I said before. I think the antisemitism, as I said to you, it’s… Look, antisemitism is made up of many different air components, but at the baseline is theological hatred. Look, the Jews are guilty of killing God. It’s the greatest crime in history. And even if you are not a practising Christian, it’s in the culture and that’s what I believe. I’m not completely paranoid. I do not believe every Gentile thinks every Jew’s a monster. But I do believe that work has to be done on it. And unfortunately, Holocaust education doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact. We have to rethink.

“How many Jews have immigrated to Israel recently and is the immigration gaining a…” Do you know, I do not know the answer to that, Michael. I hope someone online does.

“Non Alsation French Jews.” Yes, there were Jews who’d originally come from Bordeaux. There were Jews who’d lived in Avignon, going back for many centuries. The Bordeaux Jews were in fact Sephardi wine growers. So the bulk of the community though, at the time of the Revolution were Alsation.

• [Wendy] Trudy?

• Yes,

• [Wendy] I don’t think we’re going to be able to get through all the questions today 'cause we have Jeremy Rosen coming on in just over 45 minutes.

• Thank you. And can I publicly thank Judy because she makes all these marvellous slides. I am completely ineffectual when it comes to doing anything technological. And so thank you a hundred times Judy and-

• [Judy] Welcome, Trudy.

• I keep on asking her to come and live with me, but she turns me down. Anyway. Thank you.

• But I , yeah.

• [Wendy] And we’ll see everybody for Rabbi Rosen in about 45 minutes.

• All right, God bless everyone.

• [Wendy] Thanks everybody, bye-bye.