Trudy Gold
From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Crisis of Jewish Identity, Part 1
Trudy Gold | From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Crisis of Jewish Identity, Part 1 | 08.16.21
- Morning, Trudy. Morning, Lauren.
Good morning, Wendy. You good?
I’m good, but do you see that there are terrible fires in Israel?
Oh.
And I think that was arson. And they don’t have enough firefighters. And, you know, they’re looking at it, they’re actually looking, they’re evacuating people. And it’s very close to Hadassah Hospital.
Oh no, we’ve got to the stage where who wants to listen to the news anymore?
Well.
It’s a dark time we’re living through, yeah. And I believe you’re bringing someone in on the Afghan crisis on Thursday?
Oh, we bring, so my friend, Dennis Ross, who’s wonderful.
Oh, fantastic.
[Wendy] You know who Dennis Ross is.
Yeah.
So Dennis will be dealing with yes, the Afghan issue.
No, this week, it’s a very, very full programme, very interesting. And you have the Jewish Museum tonight, haven’t you? Following it on my tonight, your lunchtime, yeah.
Yeah, so another good friend of mine, Philip Larriot, will be, he put the exhibition together with a curator.
Fantastic. Fantastic.
At the Jewish Museum. And he agreed to be in conversation with one of the curators who you work together with.
[Trudy] Fabulous, fabulous.
That’s going to be at 2:30.
Right.
So Trudy, today, you’re going to-
[Trudy] No.
You’re doing from Dreyfus to Vichy.
I’m looking at Jewish identity again in France because what I thought is a good theme before Yom Tov is to actually look at what it means to be a Jew.
Right.
Because over Yom Tov, of course, we’ve got all those special lectures. And I think it’s the time of reflection, isn’t it? Particularly, the world we’re living in. So that’s what I thought I’d concentrate on when I look at France today. And it’s going to take at least two weeks because I’m trying very hard to take your advice and go slower, yeah.
A lot to say and a lot to think about. So welcome back, everybody. Another week, 16th of August. The year is flying by.
Yeah.
And so Trudy, thanks once again. So over to you.
Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.
- Thank you very much, Wendy. Can I have the first slide, Lauren? Thank you very much. And I’d like to thank my son-in-law this week for doing my slides for me. So Philip Rubenstein, if you’re listening in Cornwall, thank you very, very much. Now when I’m talking about France, from Dreyfus to Vichy, obviously, what I am talking about, I decided it’s important to focus on, is Jewish identity. Because really from the French Revolution onwards, this is really what I think affects so many of us right down to this day. What on earth does the word Jew mean? What does it mean to us? Are we citizens of the countries in which we live? Is our loyalty to the nation state? Is pluralist identity possible? What if you’re not religious? Is there such a thing as cultural affiliation, peoplehood? And please don’t forget that Theodor Herzl, when he was in Paris at the time of the Dreyfus affair. In 1891, when he first arrived in the city, he actually said, “France is the centre of civilization. It will take the rest of the world a hundred years to achieve what the French have achieved.”
And he’s there, he witnesses the degradation of Alfred Dreyfus. So just to recap incredibly briefly, Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jew on the French general staff, at a time, when the Jewish population of France was under 80,000 out of a population of 36 million. So you must see the Jews as a really tiny prick within French society, the society that is mainly Catholic with a small Protestant minority, but it’s very much a Catholic country. So he’s there, he sees Dreyfus publicly dishonoured, and it makes him realise that for him, because after all, Herzl himself had been an assimilated Jew. Born in Budapest, then in Vienna, aware of the anti-Semitic currents in Viennese society, saw himself as a modern man. Then he’s in France, and it makes him realise that he has to rethink Jewish identity. And because he was such an activist, he actually, as a really as a response to the Dreyfus affair, he writes down “Der Judenstaat” in which he says, “Let sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the requirements of a nation.”
For Herzl, the Dreyfus affair was the final pinprick in his search for a Jewish identity. So going back to the Dreyfus affair itself. So he comes from a wealthy family. He is very much a loyal Frenchman. He joins the French Army. He in fact was married by the Chief Rabbi of France. He marries the daughter of a banker. He lives a rather ordinary life. He’s a rather ordinary man until his street swirls around him as he’s really the cypher in this whole affair. And the heroes and villains that I’ve talked about. He’s really the cypher in the middle. Now, Libre Parole, of course, the anti-Semitic newspaper of Edouard Drumont, their headline, “It was not a man being degraded for an individual error, but an entire race whose shame is laid bare.” Because as you all know, when Dreyfus was found guilty in camera, trumped-up charges, completely false, and when he was publicly dishonoured, the mob whipped up by La Libre Parole was screaming, “Death to the Jews.”
And this is Le Figaro, “He was the colour of treason, a wraith from the ghetto.” Important to believe even though his family, his brother is going to be a real hero in this, even though his family believed in his innocence, and when he was degraded, he screamed, “I am innocent,” the Jewish community believed he was guilty. And I’m quoting now the very good historian, Michael Marrus, “Having emphasised for so long that they were French, they could scarcely assert with any vigour, their rights to be Jews. In this, as in everything else they did, they truly showed themselves to be Frenchmen that they claimed to be.” Bernard Lazare, the very famous Jewish anarchist, after the truth was finally revealed in 1898, he says, he writes, “It was because Dreyfus was a Jew that he was arrested. It was because he was a Jew that he was tried. And it was because he was a Jew that the voice of truth and justice is not allowed to speak on his behalf.” And of course, he’s sent to Devil’s Island, that penal colony just off the coast of South America, where he lived in the most appalling, degraded situation. Just think malaria, bugs. He was chained every night. Nobody was allowed to speak to him. How he didn’t go insane, I will never know. And during the five years he was a prisoner on Devil’s Island, believe it or not, the Consistoire, you know, the official body of Jews in France, barely discussed the case. And in between 1895 and 1898, France completely polarised.
In 1896, Colonel Picquart, who was the new head of French intelligence, he was a real hero. He’d been one of them, Dreyfus’s officers’ military school. He didn’t like him very much, but he realised that there was a problem with a forgery. And he worries and worries about it. His superiors don’t want to know about it. And in fact, he’s imprisoned for a while. But he took the fresh evidence, and he sent it to the brother of Dreyfus and to people who were taking Dreyfus’s side. Because as I talked about it with you last week, the point about the Dreyfus affair, it’s not just about a Jew at the centre. From the point of view of Jewish history, it is because it’s incredibly important in Jewish history. But from the point of view of France, what’s it really about? What force will survive in French society?
In 1898, there was another trial. There’s so much evidence that he comes back for another trial. Again, he is found guilty. And the French trial, even though the facts of the case were revealed, even though the real culprit was found out to be a man called Esterhazy, he was an Austro-Hungarian, one of these adventurers of life. And he was a gambler, a womaniser. He, in fact, fled the country and finished up living in England. He was a violent anti-Semite, but that wasn’t his issue. His issue was just to make as much money as possible from the, you know, from selling secrets. He had even befriended Jews in exchange for money in the past. So he is a villain of the police. The man who did the court forgeries, a man called Colonel Henry, he committed suicide in his cell when it was discovered that they were forgeries. “He had honour,” said the other officers, “he did what was necessary.”
And La Libre Parole has set up a fund for his widow, raising as much money as possible for Colonel Henry, who was the loyal Frenchman. Because what was really on trial to the French, the honour of France. And at the second trial, it couldn’t even be heard, held in Paris, it had to be held in Rennes. A thousand people mobbed the Dreyfus house screaming. There were 55 different attacks on Jews just before the trial. The synagogue, the Rue Copernic was mobbed. It was a terrible, volatile situation. So the second trial, where he’s again found guilty, is held in the Rennes. Now, it’s at this stage that this worldwide fanfare, Queen Victoria sent a note to Lord Russell, who was her chief justice, asking him to interfere on behalf of Britain. In America, the American press, many countries were saying the French are behaving absolutely appallingly. And against also the backdrop of the Catholic Church, which sees any threat to their power from the republic.
So France is totally polarised between Republicans, between those who believed in liberty, equality, fraternity, and also those who wanted the honour of the army, the church, the monarchy. It’s the right, it’s the left. And Dreyfus is absolutely at the middle. There was also extreme violence against the Jews in the French colony in Algeria, where French Army officers whipped the mob up against the Jews. And the trial in Rennes actually took five weeks. This time, although Dreyfus was found guilty, there was extenuating circumstances. He was sentenced to another five years on Devil’s Island. His brother appeals to the President of France for clemency. In September 9th, 1899, he is pardoned. The pro-Dreyfus sides were absolutely incensed, but he was too weak. He just couldn’t go back. And it wasn’t until 1906 that he was actually found to be innocent and officially declared innocent in 1906.
And the irony of it all, in 1914, he reenlisted as a lieutenant colonel for France in the First World War. And also his son. His son was with him when he enlisted in the army. He also enlisted in the army. Now, it had a huge, can we just have a look at some of the slides, if you don’t mind? Because that, of course, is a very famous picture of Alfred Dreyfus. Could we have a look at a few of the posters? I cannot overemphasise how important this trial was. This is the Watergate, this is the biggest scandal of French society, really, of European society. In England, there was a lot of sympathy for Dreyfus, but there were also authors like Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, who, I’ll come onto him in a minute. G. K. Chesterton, these characters were very right wing, they were very Catholic. And they basically said, “Of course, Dreyfus is guilty because he’s a Jew. No Jew can be loyal to the state. They are a separate race.”
So it polarises the right wing. And ironically, if you were looking for the most anti-Semitic country in the world in the year 1900, it would be a toss-up between Russia under Nicholas II or France. So, you know, the France, in my own opinion, I think the French pulled off an incredible sleight of hand in the Second World War to become the great heroes of the Resistance. You know, something like 2% of the French population were in the Resistance. So, and it’s only really in the ‘80s and '90s that France began to come to terms with her record. So anyway, I just wanted to show you through illustrations, and I know Patrick’s been dealing with collecting in France, and I have all these posters because he used to take me to the flea markets, where for something like eight euros, these are front covers of Le Petit Journal, and I’ve got about a dozen of them. And this is just the pick, it’s just the pick of the iceberg.
There’s an extraordinary picture on the front cover of a sort of French version of “Punch” at a soiree, where a woman is leaning back, putting her head, hand like this, saying, “I am so bored with the Dreyfus affair,” because as you all know, it galvanised everybody. It was the line. So, and I think let’s have a look at the other characters, please. Let’s see, this is Colonel Henry. He came up through the ranks. And this is the man who could’ve been responsible for forging extra documents. And this is the man who killed himself rather than dishonour the army. So, “He behaved as a French officer should,” quote unquote, and let’s have a look at Picquart. He is the hero. He actually, in Clemenceau’s government, became Minister of War. And he died in an accident in the beginning of the First World War. But even though he didn’t like Dreyfus very much, he believed in honour and justice.
So Colonel Picquart, a real hero. And now, we come to a real, yeah, there you are, Colonel Esterhazy. What a terrible, terrible character. He was, yeah, he’s the subject. I would imagine he’d be the subject of a really, really good film. There have been six films on the Dreyfus affair that I know of. Anyway, shall we go on, please? Because there is a hero, and that is Emile Zola. Emile Zola is a very, very important figure in France. And he was the most important writer who finally took a stand in the Dreyfus affair. So I’m going to give you a little bit of background to Zola. His dates are 1840 to 1902. And I really think that if you want to read some of his works, he was a real champion of the people. He worked on subjects of social justice. Look, it’s the Third Republic. The Third Republic, which was on the edge of modernity. But it was also to many people, decadent. A lot of people were suffering.
And this man believed passionately in justice. He was born in Aix-en-Provence, that absolutely fabulous city. And then he went back to Paris. He was a very close childhood friend of Paul Cezanne. And he tried to get into law school and then turned to a literary career. And he, like many writers, he earned a living as a political journalist. You’ll be surprised how many writers, how many political figures, I mean, for example, Karl Marx who lived some of his life in Paris, cousin of Heine. He worked for the Chicago Tribune. Moses Hess wrote for the New York Times. These characters, they had to live. And basically, his novels are set against the background of Haussmann’s Paris. Patrick’s talked to you about that, the great boulevards. And what he looks at are the influence of alcoholism, prostitution, violence against the growth of industrialization.
I think one of the reasons anti-Semitism was so high in France is that Jews were very much seen as at the forefront of modernity. They really had nothing to lose. “They were the characters who came from that other planet,” as Isaiah Berlin said, and they saw what could happen. And they threw themselves not in just into business, but into movements for change, into sociology, literature, music, art, you name it. And at the forefront of things different were Jews. And so many people suffered as cities grew. I mean, Paris was the second city in Europe to reach a million people after London. And London had far better poor law reforms than Paris. An awful lot of people suffered terribly. “Germinal” is a wonderful book, which is a… It’s the story of coal miners and how they survive in North France. “La Bitumen” is about psychosis and sexuality.
You know, very much influenced by the new developing school of psychoanalysis. And also “L'OEuvre” which is a brilliant account of a fictional relationship between Zola and Cezanne. So basically, he’s very much the author of social justice. He hates the exploitation of women. And I’m not talking about the sort of glorious, Patrick calls them, the grande horizontale. I’m talking about ordinary women who had no protection except to go to the streets. Now, he’s at the centre of French intellectual life. Now, how was he on the Jews? It’s interesting because several Jewish characters mainly associated with the financial world appear in some of his novels. About a third of the members of the French Stock Exchange were Jewish. And the other point about Jews in Paris, after the fall of Alsace-Lorraine to the Germans, thousands of German-speaking Jews fled to France. And with their thick accents, and according to him, their different manners, they were seen as an alien influence. He writes about this.
Don’t forget that in 1873, the stock market had collapsed. Of course, a few Jewish financiers were involved. A disproportionate number of the financiers, of course, were Catholic. When the Catholic Union Bank collapsed, they were all Catholic. When the panel, I talked last week about the Panama Canal Scandal, Jews were involved in that. But so were a lot of other people. It does seem to be that when society is threatened, they do look to the other. And he does write about Jews not always in a flattering way. In, for example, in his book, “Eugene Rougon” the character of Kahn is quote, “An unscrupulous deputy, a railway contractor, an ironmaster, son of a Jewish banker from Bordeaux.” He had in “Nana”, his brilliant novel on prostitution. He talks about the Jew, Steiner, who a masses a huge fortune, and loses it all in total dissipation, and is finally ruined by the beautiful Nana. And he then writes a book on the bourse, it’s called “L'Argent”. And there are various Jewish bankers, speculators, he writes this in 1890, '91, and there are a lot of Jewish speculators in this.
Even in the height of the Dreyfus affair, in his book “Paris” in 1898, there are many Jewish characters in an unfavourable light. And this is an article in Le Figaro though for the Jews. This is in 1896. You see the point is there were unfavourable Jewish characters on the stock exchange. Is it anti-Semitism to include them? Because two years earlier, in a major article in Le Figaro, remember he’s one of the most famous writers in France, “For some years, I’ve been following, with increasing surprise and disgust, the campaign, which some people are waging in France against the Jews. This seems to me, monstrous, by which I mean something foreign to all common sense, truth, justice, something blind and foolish, which would carry us back several centuries and which will end in the worst of abominations, religious persecution.”
This particular article deals with anti-Semitism in general, not with the Dreyfus affair. In another article, he does say that there are stereotypes amongst the Jews. They are clannish, they do love money. Quote unquote, “Even if it is the true result of hundreds of years of our mindless persecution,” quote, “the Jews have been beaten, insulted, and laden with injustice and violence whilst non-Jewish neighbours have contemptuously abandoned the field of commerce to them and bestowed on them the label of user in traffic and traffickers.” And it’s finally though, in L'Aurore, with L'Aurore, which is the newspaper of Clemenceau, later president of the republic, that he writes the famous case after the Rennes trial, he writes “J'Accuse…!” And can we see the copy, please? It’s one of the most famous articles in the world. Oh yes, this is Queen Victoria. And sorry, I’d forgotten I’d included this. Sorry, Lauren.
This is G. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. They were both mountains of men. And later on, I will be talking more about them, but I just wanted to bring them into the Dreyfus affair. They were two of, I suppose, the five most important literary intellectuals in England at the time. They’re more product of the Edwardian age. But I thought it was important to mention just how important the Dreyfus affair was. Winston Churchill, by the way, had been visiting friends in Paris, and he writes to his mother about the monstrous Dreyfus affair. He was totally in favour of Dreyfus and his innocence. So it’s the sort of issue that everybody took sides on. So can we please go on to the post of, there you are. He writes a letter to the president of the republic, and in it, he accuses the general staff. He names names. He accuses them of the whole thing of being a completely trumped-up charge. He accuses them of anti-Semitism. He knows that he is going to have to be tried because libel in France is criminal. He was brought to trial. He was brought to trial actually for labelling, for libelling Esterhazy, who, by this time, had admitted his guilt but was in London. And he is found guilty, Zola is found guilty, and he has to go to London.
But it’s an incredibly important thing that he did. He suffered for it because now, this is where we’re not quite sure. He later died of as asphyxiation. He returns to Paris. And in 1902, his chimneys had been swept, but evidently, they hadn’t been swept. It was all blocked up. And he dies of asphyxiation in his living room. And those in favour of Dreyfus believed that he had actually been murdered by those who were against Dreyfus. So probably the greatest writer in France, who put his head on the neck, he put his neck on the line for Dreyfus. Did he pay for his life? But certainly, he believed in justice. Now, this is the brilliant Adam Gopnik on the Dreyfus affair. “In the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, an assimilated Jew who had mastered the bureaucratic system. But Maupassant’s world of ambition and pleasure, it met Kafka’s world of inexplicable, bureaucratic suffering.”
So Gopnik, it’s an epoch of progress and an epoch of reactionaries. I want to kind of go sideways now. And a film was, I having told you that six films were made on the subject of Dreyfus. In 1937, Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers was probably the most Jewish in terms of subject matter of any of the American film studios. They’d already gone into bio by making, in 1936, “The Life of Louis Pasteur”. And in 1937, they decided to make “The Life of Emile Zola”. It’s called “J'Accuse”. Now what is fascinating about it is that the word Jew is never mentioned and anti-Semitism is never mentioned. It’s about the two forces. Even in 1937, the director was a German called William Dieterle, who had come to Hollywood. You know, he was a liberal. You don’t want to be in, you just do not want to be in Germany if you’re a liberal. And of course, over the water, the Nazis are coming to pound.
But even in 1937, think about it, we’re past the Nuremberg Laws. A Jewish studio was too timid to actually come out with the word Jew. And tragically, this is going to be the real story of Hollywood. And it’s something that I will be presenting to you later on in the term because I think it’s such a fascinating subject. But I wanted to do a side step because I wanted to show you a clip. Well, actually, the introduction to the life of Emile Zola. It won three Oscars. It won an Oscar in 1937 for Best Picture. It also won an Oscar for Paul Muni. Paul Muni plays Emile Zola. And I just want to bring Paul Muni in because we are talking about Jewish identity and heroes. And this is over the channel, over the pond. And in fact, Paul Muni, he was born in 1895, so he is born in, you know, just as the Dreyfus affair was really taking off, but he was a great fighter for justice. He dies in 1967.
He was born Weisenfreund. He came from Lemberg in Austro-Hungary. Yiddish was his first language. He emigrated with his parents as a small child to Chicago. Both his parents were actors in the Yiddish Theatre. And he had his first major role when he was only 12 years old. He was a brilliant wiz with makeup. When he was 12, he played an 80-year-old man. He became very involved with the Yiddish Arts Theatre. He was a cousin to Edward G. Robinson, who kept the G to remind himself of his Jewishness. He started acting on Broadway in 1926. He played an old Jewish man. He was only 31 when he did that. It’s called “We Americans”. And it was the first time he’d actually, he’d acted in the English language. Now, he had already gained quite, before he played Emile Zola, he gained quite a reputation himself. He was, of course, the original “Scarface”, written by the brilliant Ben Hecht. And “I’m a Fugitive from the Chain Gang”, also written by, written by Ben Hecht, nominated for an opera, sorry, an Oscar.
Warner Brothers built him as the greatest actor in the world. Marlon Brando appeared with him in 1946 in a Zionist play written by Ben Hecht called “A Flag is Born”. And Marlon Brando’s actually said that, “He is the greatest actor I have ever seen.” And Al Pacino, when he played Scarface, he said, “I actually watched everything that Paul Muni ever did. He was the greatest of actors.” Paul Muni was a great hero because during in the '40s, he was very much part of the effort in America, mainly sponsored by the Bergson Group, who were Irgun, to bring the world’s attention to what was going on to his people. So here, let, so if you don’t mind, Lauren, and I hope it works, shall we see the opening of “The Life of Emile Zola”?
Okay, I just wanted to give you a taste of it. You can actually get hold of it, by the way, on, you can get it on YouTube, you can watch the whole film if you like. It is a bit dated. One of the things I’m hoping to be able to do is to cut and clip films for you so that we could have a whole series on how the Dreyfus affair has been dealt with. And I know the French version is very, very good, the latest one. So, but now I want to move on, on the subject of Jewish identity, because basically, what’s coming out very loud and clear is that the majority of Jews kept under the parapet. They really, really couldn’t believe what was happening in France, the country of the republic.
But then in the end, Dreyfus was, in 1906, pardoned. And back in 1905, there had been the separation of Church and state. And what had happened was a couple of Catholic bishops had actually come out in favour of the republic for which they were sanctioned by the Holy See. And for the left wing group, which had power, the Bloc des Gauches which had power in the General Assembly, that was enough. And they finally went for the separation of Church and state in 1905. So from the Jewish point of view, it would’ve seemed that perhaps this time France has held, the France of the republic, the France of the rights of man, the France of liberty, equality, fraternity, the France that had emancipated the Jews, that it was possible to be Frenchmen of the Jewish religion. But there were a few individuals, who even at this stage, began to think seriously about what Jewish identity meant.
And I want to talk now about somebody that I admire so much, a man called Edmond Fleg. His dates are 1874 to 1963. He was born in Geneva to a family of Alsatian Jews. They had a very strong loyalty to the values of the French Revolution. And they very much believed, he was brought up in an intellectual family. His family believed that Judaism itself equated with the ideas of tolerance, of equality, freedom, that there was nothing within the French dream of revolution that was in any way a problem for being a Jew. He had both a secular and a religious education. I think one of the problems, and this is, I think, an issue that’s with us to this day. He, obviously, had a better secular education than a religious education. This is his own reflection on his Bar Mitzvah. “The entire spectacle was artificial, no Hebrew, inconsistencies.” And he grew up, that’s what he wrote. And he grew up with a kind of disdain for organised Judaism and for really the whole rabbinical caste.
I think this is a problem that really does reflect in many of our lives today. I know personally that my secular education was far better than my Jewish education. And I know that’s true of many, many of my acquaintances. And I think in order to walk the tightrope, you really do have to be to have both because this is an incredibly intelligent boy, brilliant secular education. He actually qualified as a German teacher. He became, ironically, he was very close at school to a chap called Lucien Moreau, who later became one of the leaders of the Action Francaise. These are groups that are going to form who particularly after the First World War, although there are some between 1905 and 1914 that really want to take France back to republic Catholic, from the republic to Catholic values to a dream of a conservative France.
Never forget how Catholic France really is outside of Paris. They both agreed, interestingly enough, that French and Jewish nationalism travelled on parallel lines. Both he, Fleg is particularly because of the Dreyfus affair, he is beginning to realise that can a Jew really be a Frenchman? But in World War I, he joined the French Foreign Legion to actually to fight for his adopted country. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre. And in 1937, he becomes an officer of the Legion of Honour. Between 1904 and 1920, he’s one of France’s most successful playwrights. But having taken another track thinking that you cannot be both, he participated in the Third Zionist Congress and heard the reports of the pogroms. And this is what he wrote. “Initially, the Dreyfus affair passed me by, but later, it pushed me into the reality of the Jewish problem. It became very difficult for to forget completely that you were a Jew.” Could we go on to have a look at Edmond Fleg’s face, if you don’t mind? No, the next one, thank you.
That’s him. He’s very, very good-looking. He was very much part of French intellectual society though. He wrote the libretto for Bloch’s “Macbeth”. He worked on Enescu’s “OEdipe”. He wrote many plays. He wrote a beautiful translation of Goethe’s “Faust” and a beautiful translation of “Julius Caesar” in 1937. Tragically, both his sons died in the First World War. He became president of, in 1935, he became president of Jewish Scout Movement. He became very impressed with Israel Zangwill, of course, the fascinating English Jewish writer. And then he decides he’s going to study Jewish history. He needed to find a reason for modern intellectual Jews to remain Jewish. He’s having problems with his Judaism itself. He’s torn. He’s attended the Zionist Congress, but he’s part of French intellectual life. Can you walk on the edge? Can you walk the tightrope? And what I’m going to do now is I’m actually going to put on screen some of his readings, if you don’t mind. Let’s see if this works, please.
Now, tragically, both his sons died in the First World War. So let’s read this very, very slowly. “Is it to you? It is to you I want to answer, little unborn grandson. When will you will be old enough to listen to me? When you feel yourself, when will you feel yourself a Jew? I now understand the Zionist programme in no way implies the return of all Jews to Palestine, a thing numerically impractical. The Jewish fatherland is for Jews who feel they have no other.” And this isn’t on the screen, but I’m just going to read this too. “When I was 20, I felt I had no part in Israel. I was persuaded Israel would disappear. That in 20 years time, people would no longer speak of her. The 20 years have passed. I have become a Jew again. If you believe the flame of Israel is extinguished in you, watch and wait, it will burn again. This is an old story repeated in every generation. Since the Dreyfus affair, the Jewish question has seemed to me a reality. Now it appears tragic. What is Judaism? A danger, they say, for society to which you belong. I have abandoned the Jewish religion. You are a Jew all the same. Of Israel, I was entirely ignorant. I regretted all the years spent in the study of philosophy and comparative literature. I ought to have learned Hebrew, to have studied my race, its origins, its belief, its role in history, and its place amongst groups today. Then I found Zionism.”
Can we go on to the next article, please, Lauren? “My heart and mind have always gone out to France. The Jewish drama was agony for me. What is Zionism? 3 million Jews will speak Hebrew and live on Hebrew soil. But the 12 million Jews who will remain scattered throughout the world. For them and for me, the tragic question remains, what is Judaism and what ought a Jew to do? How to be a Jew and why to be a Jew?” He actually wrote “The History of the Jews”. And I think this is particularly poignant because of course, he’s writing before the Shiva. He couldn’t believe that the France he’d given in everything to the Dreyfus affair, he still fought for France. He lost his sons for France.
And then he comes through, “I am a Jew because born of France, having lost her, I have felt her live again in me, more living than myself. I am a Jew because the faith of Israel demands of me no abdication of the mind. I am a Jew because the faith of Israel requires of me all the devotion of my heart. I am a Jew because in every place where suffering weeps, the Jew weeps. I am a Jew because at every time when despair cries out, the Jew hopes. I am a Jew because the world of Israel is the oldest and the newest. I am a Jew because the promise of Israel is the universal promise. I am a Jew because for Israel, the world is not yet complete. Men are completing it.” Can we go on please? Okay, now actually, we… No, I have, I’m running out of time. Go back to the last one. I’m sorry, I’m very sorry. I think we should stay with this.
I’m reading a little more of what he had to stay. “I now will understand that the Zionist programme in no way implies the return of all Jews to Palestine, a thing numerically impractical. The Jewish fatherland is for Jews who feel they have no other. And I say to myself from this remote father right up to my own father, all these fathers have handed on a truth. And shall I not hand it onto my blood? Will you take it from me, my child? Will you hand it on? Perhaps you’ll wish to abandon it. If so, let it be for a greater truth if there is one. I shall not blame you. It will be my fault, I shall have failed you. But whether you abandon it or follow it, Israel would journey on until the end of days. So that’s the extraordinary Edmond Fleg. He wrote "The Jewish Anthology” in 1921. What he was looking for is really reasons for Jewish intellectuals to remain Jewish. He’s most famous for what I’ve just read to you, “The Hero of Israel”.
He lived through the agony of the Holocaust. In 1954, all his works were collected into one volume, spanning the whole of Jewish history. And in his subtitle to this particular thing I’ve just read you was a young agnostics return. He was an active member of the Alliance. Remember the Alliance spread Jewish. It was an extraordinary school system within the Arab world. Four Jews living in the Arab world, where they were taught in French and they were taught also French culture. So he never gives up his affection to that side of France, the France of intellectuality, the France, the humane side of France. He was also a member of the World Jewish Congress. In World War II, he lived in the Italian-occupied part of France. And the Resistance, he was very famous. And the Resistance kept him safe basically. So he survived the Second World War. And it broke his heart. This is the agony, I think, of so many Jews in the '20s and '30s who did want to believe in the civilization of man.
We’re going to have exactly the same thing when we deal with Germany, when we deal with the Habsburg Empire. America, I think, is a slightly different situation because of what the sociologists call hyphenated identity. Now whether we can talk about that anymore, I don’t know, because tragically, we do seem to, we veered, don’t we, as societies from openness to closedness? When does it become closed? When we feel threatened. And ironically, the Jew, certainly in the Western world is the prime scapegoat. Now, that’s not to say that every kind of racism isn’t an evil disease, but I do believe the Jews have a distinct place because I think they are the only group that are accused of being the international world power that pulls everybody’s strings. You know, there is no logic in race theory because all you have to do is to look at the Shah, which to me is the greatest example of powerlessness in history. And then the twist of the knife today is, of course, that the Zionists were in cahoots with the Nazis. That is the latest calumny that is coming out of anti-Semitism.
So, but with Fleg, I just found his writings absolutely beautiful because he does go beyond it, doesn’t he? And he does say that, “Within Jewish identity, within Judaism, within being a Jew is the universal promise that you can walk the world of the prophets.” And I just find him absolutely inspiring. Look, he was a hero. He joined the French Foreign Legion. He won the Croix de Guerre. He was a man of dignity, a man of spirit, and a great human being. So I think rather than rush on to Leon Blum, who I’m going to talk about tomorrow, because of course, there’s a lot to say about him and that kind of identity, because he, of course, this is the other side of the coin, there have been two Jewish prime ministers of France. And Blum, of course, was the first of them. The second was Mendes France. And ironically, there was another great French hero, who I shall mention tomorrow, Georges Mandel, who Churchill would’ve be preferred to lead the French. He was a great hero who tragically was murdered by the Nazis with the complicity of French vaches.
So I think it’s better to stop here because I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of discussion on this. I hope there will be. Because really, I think we’re getting to the core here of Jewish identity. What on earth does it mean to be a Jew in the modern world?
So thank you, and let’s see if there are questions. Yes, there are.
Q&A and Comments
Lauren, Jennifer, a question for Wendy. “The Dennis Ross, the American who negotiated on behalf of Israel?” I can’t answer.
Yes, yes.
Great, Wendy. Oh, Wendy, thank you.
Yes, Ben Dennis from Washington Institute.
That’s marvellous, Wendy.
Yeah.
And of course, that’s Thursday night. Chella is asking,
Q: “What’s the name of the movie?” A: It’s called “J'accuse”. It was made in 1937.
Now Gitakon says that Ahad Ha'am opposed Herzl’s political design and is devoid of Jewish culture. You see, that’s the problem. We asked who called us a stubborn and stiff-necked people. Ahad Ha'am is fascinating. To Herzl, was the man of action, the journalist. What does he do? For him, it’s pragmatic. “We’ve got to create our own nation. Only in our own nation, we’ll be safe.” Ahad Ha'am says, “The only justification for a Jewish nation is that we become the moral, spiritual, and intellectual wellspring of the Jewish world, and we will send light to all the nations.” You know, this is this prophetic destiny of the Jew. They called Ahad Ha'am the agnostic rabbi. He came from a Hasidic background, the sect. He broke away or did he? You know, even Israel Zangwill, when he was with Herzl at the First Zionist Congress, he wrote a wonderful poem. Let me see if I can remember. He took the line, “By the rivers of Babylon, we wet. We sat down in Zurich by the river, and we wet no more.”
Trudy, I’m sorry, I’m just going to jump in. I’m going to just jump in and just say that Dennis Ross, he was the ambassador, and he played a leading role in shaping the US involvement in the Middle East peace process. He worked together with George Bush, and Bill Clinton, and I think, Obama, I’m not quite sure, I’ll check it out. Yes, he’s very experienced politician and very lovely man. And it’ll be very, very interesting.
It’s going to be wonderful, Wendy. So yes, Marcel Pruse, Leon Blum did not believe Dreyfus was guilty, exactly. Look, by 1896, if you had any sense in your head, if you believed in rationality at all, the evidence was there, that’s the point. In 1898, the man who committed the forgeries killed himself. But it wasn’t about whether he was guilty or innocent in the end. Look, if you read people like Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc in London, they didn’t care whether he was guilty or not. The Jewish race is guilty. It goes way beyond an individual Jew. This is the problem. Aren’t Jews citizens of the countries in which they live? You may believe that, but what if a section of your society doesn’t believe it? And that’s the problem that they were facing in France, that the mob was whipped up. The Catholic Church was very conservative. Not just about the Jews, the Catholic Church was fighting socialism. It was fighting liberalism. It was fighting the secular French Republic. Look, in the hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, Britain didn’t even send a representative because it was a republic that got rid of a king. Monarchists couldn’t attend, none of the monarchies attended the unsent celebration, sent anyone to the celebrations. It’s about a division in society. And quite often in the West, the Jews are at the centre.
Look, it’s partly economic, it’s partly look for the difference, it’s partly race theory, but I think underlying it all, tragically, is the deicide. I know I often say that to you, and I am not completely nuts. I don’t believe people wander around thinking Jews killed Christ. Of course, they don’t. But this is where the negativity comes from, in my view. Yes, yes, even Pruse had characters discussing. Yes, of course. Because it was the, in it. Everybody talked about it. I mean, tragically, we’re going to be talking about Afghanistan for a while, but it will not have the same resonance as the Dreyfus affair. Look, and I’m saying that with a heavy heart. Yes, Robert Harris’s book on Dreyfus. It’s excellent. Yes, agreed.
Q: Valerie, “Have you got the double cartoon one showing a family sitting down to dinner? Everything is in order in the caption. They haven’t mentioned it yet. The second part showing everything in disarray and people standing up and gesticulating. Then the captain is mentioned. Someone mentioned it.” A: Yes, it absolutely divided France. And of course, the French Impressionists that, you know, the music people, everybody. I mean, I think Patrick’s lectured on this. It’s very funny because if you’ve not studied this, you’ll have your own favourites amongst the Impressionists. And when he tells you which ones were really hostile, does it affect your love of their art? And again, you get back to that really interesting debate. If someone is a ghastly individual, can you still adore their music, their art? It’s a great debate.
Yes, they find, this is from Joan. “They finally showed that Polanski Dreyfus film in Israel on TV. It was not shown in America.” I believe, and no, of course, it wouldn’t be, would it? Yeah, yeah. Yes, of course. Yes, it was published in L'Aurore. Yes, Zola did work for Clemenceau. And don’t forget that Picquart went to work in his government. He became Minister for War. “Comparing France to Russia on anti-Semitism about 1900 leaves me aghast. There were no pogroms in France. And my grandparents”… Robert, there were 55 different pogroms around the Rennes trial. They were not as widespread, I agree with you. But “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was first published in Paris by the head of the Russian Secret Service. Look, what was happening on the ground in Russia is beyond imagination. But France, it was pretty, pretty bad. And I think the other, and I think the point is a lot of… Look, some French Jews did find a welcome in France. Yes, of course, they did. A lot of them were pushed on to America by the existing community.
Q: “Why did Jews leave for France after 1871?” A: Because it had been French territory, and they believed themselves to be Frenchmen. One of the problems with Dreyfus was he was a loyal French member of the army, but his family fortune was still in Alsace, and money was being received from Alsace.
Oh, this is Valerie, lovely. “A character in one of Golesworthy novels say, 'The trouble with Hebrews is they get on so.’” Yeah, that’s very a Anglo, isn’t it? Gloria is pointing out in the Jewish Museum in Paris, there’s a huge display of the Dreyfus affair, including newspapers and writers. Ellie, “My mother used to rave about Paul Muni. He was a hero to her.” He was an extraordinary actor. And there’s an amazing pageant the beginning of 1944 for the murdered Jews of Europe. And he is the lead in that pageant. It was extraordinary. Edward G. was there. There was a whole raft of stars, Jewish stars in Hollywood, who did put their heads above the parapet. The problem with the moguls was that they didn’t.
[Wendy] Trudy.
Yes.
[Wendy] Helen Lehman sent me a WhatsApp saying, “A very close friend of mine who passed away, Professor Lauren Batler, set up an amazing exhibition on Dreyfus and went around the world giving lectures and collecting memorabilia, making movies, and writing about the Dreyfus affair. It is now in the custodianship of Dr. Marjorie Dugan and the Philadelphia University, and she’s offered to introduce us to her.”
Oh, superb, wonderful.
[Wendy] And she says that she’s a wonderful lecturer as well.
Oh, wonderful.
[Wendy] So that might be nice for lockdown as well.
I think that will be. Well, don’t you just love our group?
[Wendy] I do, and the generosity of our participants who are sharing, you know, other resources. So thank you, Helen, much appreciate it.
Oh, that’s lovely. If she gets, yeah, she’s got in touch, so that’s marvellous.
[Wendy] The wonderful Helen Lehman.
Oh, yes, yes. One, oh, Helen. Oh, I met her. She’s fantastic, that’s wonderful.
Q: Jonathan, “In Hitler’s willing execution, is Daniel Goldhar composites at the Shiva would more likely to have occurred in France than Germany?” A: Oh, it’s so complex, isn’t it, Jonathan? Look, German Jewry, “The Pity of It All” is the best book on it. And that is something we will be talking about, specifically about Jewish identity.
And this is Victoria, “The latest of the Dreyfus films by Polanski with Louis Garrel as Dreyfus and Jean Dujardin as Picquart.” Is it not in English subtitles?“ Cella. And we’re having nice compliments. Thank you very much, Cella. Oh, Jeffrey, "I have an Edmond Fleg in my wider family tree.” Oh my goodness, you have Yekkes. Don’t, this is the sort of thing I really love when you… I don’t think so. Yes, he was. Yes, he was. Yes, he was.
Question. Robert, yeah.
Trudy. Don’t forget to read the questions out so people know what you’re answering.
Oh, sorry, darling. Sorry, “In 1906, Dreyfus was found innocent by the court. He was not pardoned.” No, he was, what happened was in 1899, they, he didn’t have to, they basically, the president of the Republic gave him a pardon. He was found innocent in 1906. So it starts in 1894. It goes on for 12 years. Yes, people are saying thank you for showing image and name of Edmond Fleg. You can get hold of his book. I just found him absolutely inspirational.
Q: Did Oscar Wilde have an opinion on Dreyfus? A: I cannot answer that question, and I’d love to know the answer. I’m sure we’ve got. Well, I can ask David, but if not, I’m sure there’s literary specialist on.
Thank you for, this is from Chila Chaite. “I just wanted to share with you that I learned from "Who Do You Think You Are?” The programme was on Davina McCall. Her great-grandfather, Celestin Hennion was prefect of police and defended Dreyfus.“ Oh wow, what a mad world.
Q: Edmond, "Will you discuss the work of Paty de Clam in Vichy?” A: I will be talking about Vichy, yes. You see, this is the problem from Dreyfus to Vichy. The pro-Dreyfus sides and the anti-Dreyfus sides, it’s the whole line that goes all the way through into Petah. And I would suggest it’s still not been resolved. I’ll never forget that when Netanyahu went to Paris to pay his condolences. Do you remember those terrible massacres when the Charlie Hebdo was attacked and the Jewish supermarket was attacked? And what did he say to the relatives of the Jews who’d been murdered? “Come home.” You see, for Zionism, it’s an easy answer on one level, isn’t it? For Edmond Fleg, he said, “Look, we need a safe haven.” He wasn’t suggesting he should live there. And I think this is the problem for, you know, Jewish identity. There is a very interesting book by Isaac Deutscher called “The Non-Jewish Jew”. It’s a series of essays. The only one I really recommend is the first essay, “The Non-Jewish Jew”, where he talks about, “Jews who leave the confines of Judaism,” as he puts it. But they can’t really absorb into the outside world, and they live on the edge, but they change the world.
Doriane, “‘The Pity of It All’ is a must by Amos Elon.” Yes, it’s in my top five Jewish history books, definitely. “The Pity of it All” by Amos Elon. Rod, “It’s clear Fleg was an intellectual, sorely uneducated in the history of the Jewish people.” Yes, and he made up for it. He wrote a book, he wrote many volumes. But as I said to you, I think that is the problem that many of us in the West face. I still believe that the majority of Jews that I know, I can only speak anecdotally, have far more secular knowledge and the knowledge of the outside world. So I think this is a redress that we really should make. I mean, I would, you know, it’s interesting. I know that many of my South African friends had far better Jewish educations than we did in England. It’s an interesting dilemma. Even though in England today, something like 70% of Jewish kids go to Jewish primary schools, I’m not sure how good their Jewish history education is. That’s another story.
[Wendy] You know what?
Yeah.
Trudy, actually, I just want to jump in here and say where the South Africans, it was much more about identity than about education.
Yeah.
There was a very strong affiliation with Judaism, and as a community, and being proud of who we were, and not having the desire to integrate to the same extent as the British Jews, I think. I mean, I’m putting my head on the line. I might be wrong.
Was it, Wendy, that really, if you think about South African society, there was the English, and there was the Afrikaners.
[Wendy] Yes.
And there was the Jews.
[Wendy] But we were proud of being Jewish.
And exactly, I mean, you wouldn’t really want to be part of the other groups, where in England, I think what happened, there was an overweening desire to become part of England, to become Englishmen, to play cricket, to, you know. The greatest thing, what is the greatest thing that you can achieve in British society? I think the same thing happened in France, happened in Germany.
Yeah, but in South Africa-
But South Africa is different, isn’t it?
[Wendy] Yes, it was very different because South Africa, we didn’t want to, we certainly did integrate into society, but we didn’t think that we had to, what’s the word I’m looking for? Repress our identity.
Lose your- You did not have to lose-
Lose our identity.
Yeah.
No, we weren’t apologetic about who we were. We were extremely proud of who we were and what we stood for. And we are extremely proud of who we are and what we stood for. And have you look there, the South African Jews that have immigrated into the different societies, we come in and we stand tall. And we, you know, we hold on. We don’t give up our identity away.
I think yeah.
We are proud of who we are.
I’ve noticed that in London, because if you remember in the old days of the old JCC, something like a fifth of the students were South African, and they knew a lot more Jewish history. What was interesting about the English students that came, a lot of them, they were clever. You know, they were well-educated, but they didn’t know their own history. And that’s the point I’m making. And I think-
Good, Christine.
And I think it is really about understanding where you come from to be able to walk tall in any society. And I think what happened in England was this overweening desire to be part of England, if that’s possible.
[Wendy] That’s right. We believe we’re good enough being Jewish.
Yeah, yeah.
[Wendy] We didn’t have to, you know, we didn’t have to hide that.
Yeah, it’s important, and I think that’s a lovely debate we could have. America is another completely different story, isn’t it? I don’t know if there are Americans online who’ll want to comment on that. This is from Finnel.
Q: “Does Fleg use Israel to denote the Jewish people pre-state? Was this common usage?” A: Yes, it was.
“In Paris, in 16th century Paris, in Paris 16th, in Noile, the term Israelite is used while elsewhere, Jews are Jesuit.” That’s interesting, Alan. Do you know why? Joseph Gal, “Not a question, but a comment. Picquart was actually intensely anti-Semitic. His action in the Dreyfus affair was motivated only by his desire to save the army from shame.” No, Joseph, I’m not sure. You see, there’s lots and lots of different views on this. I think Picquart didn’t like Dreyfus. He taught him, he taught, he didn’t like him. I don’t know if he was an anti-Semite. You know, what level are we talking about here? He was horrified by the actions of his superiors. He was a man of great honour, I think that’s for sure. So I’ll do a bit more reading on that. Maybe you can as well.
[Wendy] Trudy, last question because we’re going to have to jump off and prepare for the next one.
Oh, yes, of course.
[Wendy] All right, thank you.
Oh, this is, I’m going to give the last question from Michael Blocke.
Q: “There is a hyphenated identity amongst all immigrants to a new land. Don’t Italian Americans import goods from Italy? Irish import and support Ireland more even than Judaeans for Israel? So it’s just not Judaeans.” A: Okay, I think you’re talking more about America, Michael.
Anyway, thank you very much, Wendy. And that is very interesting about the Dreyfus having that contact. So everyone should be on in another 40 minutes, shouldn’t they?
[Wendy] Yes, yes, and I’m going to put you in touch with Helen and-
Thank you.
[Wendy] Thank you very, very much. Thanks, everybody, for joining us.
God bless, bye.
To be continued. Just to be continued, bye-bye.
Tomorrow, bye.
Yeah.