ANTI-SEMITISM AND CHURCH 3/3

EUROPEAN ANTI-SEMITISM AND CHURCH

By Didier BERTIN – 6 APRIL 2010 – PART3/3 – END

XII – FRANCE FROM 1789 TO 1994

In 1789, approximately 50 000 Jews lived in France out of which 25 000 were in Alsace where many an-Semite riots occurred. All Jews became French Citizens in 1790 and 1792.

In 1845, Alphonse Toussenel, anti-Jewish Frenchman created a new definition of Jewish character: “An unproductive parasite, living from the substance and from the work of others”. He also created the slogan “War to Jews.”

The Newspaper titled “La Croix” (The Cross) was created in 1883 by the Christian Priests of the Assumption. In 1889“La Croix” presented itself in a sub-title, as the most anti-Jew newspaper of France. 

The anti-Semitism propaganda was increased by the recent coming in France of foreign Jewish refugees fleeing the Pogroms in Russian territories. From 1880 to 1914, 30 000 refugees arrived in France.

In 1886, the publication of the book: “La France juive” (The Jewish France) written by the extreme rightist, Edouard Drumont was very successful.  Drumont introduced the word anti-Semitism in France. His book gave an anti-Semitic view of Jews personification as illustrated by the following extract: “The Jews have this famous bent down nose, blinking eyes, tight teeth, salient ears, square nails, too long torso, round knees, very salient ankles, and the soft and smooth hand of the hypocrite and traitor. They often have an arm shorter than the other.”

The National anti-Semitic League of France, an extreme-right organization was created in 1889.

The daily anti-Semitic newspaper: « La libre parole » (the free expression) was created in 1892 by Drumont.

DREYFUS’ AFFAIR: 1894-1906

At this time 70 000 Jews lived in France out of which 15 000 came from Alsace in 1870. As a matter of fact near half of Jews of Alsace were grateful to France for having given them  the French citizenship and did not want to remain under German Authority after the defeat of Napoleon III.

Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish Captain of the French Army born in Alsace, was sentenced in 1894 by a military court to Life imprisonment under the accusation of espionage in favour of Germany on the basis of forged documents. The fact that he was Jew from Alsace made of him the perfect traitor for the anti-Semite French Military authorities.

Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picard who was appointed as Chief of Intelligence discovered in 1896 that the documents of the prosecution were forged. Authentic documents accused the Major Walin Estherazy.  The General Staff sent Picard to Tunisia to prevent him to reopen the case.

Despite the evident proofs provided by the defence, the Court acquitted Esterhazy on 10 January 1898 and condemned Alfred Dreyfus as a matter of principle and to save the honour of Army.

Under the pressure of the brother of Captain Dreyfus, the famous novelist Emile Zola published his well known denunciation, in the form of an open letter to the President of the French Republic “J’accuse…”  (I accuse…) in the newspaper “L’Aurore”.

Emile Zola accused the military Authorities of Justice denial and was then obliged to flee for a time in London.

Zola faced alone the adverse public opinion including the Members of Parliament for whom a justice decision must not be questioned.

The right wing and the Christian Church declared that Dreyfus’ case was a conspiracy of Jews and Freemasons against France and French Army.

Anti-Semitic demonstrations were organised in the French cities and a Pogrom occurred in Algiers.

The French politician Maurice Barres made a popular declaration: “I believe Dreyfus is able to betray, I deduct it from his race”.

In 1899, the War Minister after having been hostile to Dreyfus discovered that Colonel Henri was the author of the forged documents against Dreyfus. Colonel Henri was arrested and committed suicide. Colonel Picard who knew the truth since 1896 was at last authorised to testify in Court and Estherazy fled to London.

The trial was again totally arranged to maintain the guiltiness of espionage of Dreyfus to please the General Staff and opponents of Dreyfus, but extenuating conditions were mentioned by the Court to enable the President of the French Republic to pardon Alfred Dreyfus and free him. Finally twelve years after the first trial and seven years after the second, French Supreme Court declared in 1906 that Alfred was Dreyfus fully innocent.

Dreyfus’ Affair showed at the eve of the twentieth century that Anti-Semitism was deeply rooted even in the country of the Human Rights and that Jews will never be accepted in Europe and consequently this event was the start of the modern Zionism.  

In 1908, Charles Maurras created the extreme right royalist organisation « Action Française » (French Action) whose corner stone was again anti-Semitism. According to this organisation Jews, Freemasons, Protestants and Foreigners formed an “Alien Party” inside France whose target was the destruction of the traditional and catholic France. Charles Maurras was particularly loved by the French citizens of Algeria, who elected him as Member of the French Parliament.

In 1939 the government closed the borders to prevent the German Jews to flee the Nazi regime.

In 1940 after its defeat, France was divided in two: one part under the direct German Authority and another part indirectly through Maréchal Pétain’s Authority.

Pétain was anti-Jews and decided personally to implement the first anti-Semite laws in October 1940: Many professional activities were forbidden to Jews and the foreign Jews were deported in Camps. In March 1941 Pétain created a special Authority for Jewish affairs in charge of the census of Jews, the spoliation of their assets and of the anti-Semite French propaganda.

From March 1941 the French police started to arrest the Jews in the area under German occupation to deport them in the extermination camps and the foreign Jews of the non occupied area were remitted to the Germans.

In November 1942 France was entirely occupied by German troops and the French head of Police of Pétain, René Bousquet, was in charge of the arrests of Jews on the whole territory.

77 320 Jews out of 330 000 were arrested and deported to the death Camps.

From 1954 to 1956, Pierre Poujade created an organization of  small traders’ defence, which also adopted the clichés of anti-Semitism: Pierre Poujade insulted the Jewish members of the Government when he declared: “By who are we governed? By people who dare not say their names (meaning Jews): Mendes-Portugal (allusion to the Sephardic Jewish origin of Pierre Mendès-France), married to a Jewish Egyptian woman, Salomon Hirsch Ollendorf called Granval and Ben Soussa called Soustelle. It is important to unmask them and to punch up their dirty heads”.

On 2d January 1956 the supporters of Poujade obtaine 50 seats at the Parliament out of which one for Jean-Marie Le Pen (The current leader of the Extreme Right Wing).

In 1967, General De Gaulle made an official allocution in which he utilized an old Cliché looking like the idea contained in The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and which might have stir up anti-Semitism: “The Jews are an Elite People, Sure of themselves and Domineering”.

In 1969, a medieval Rumour was spread in the city of Orleans where people were assumed to be educated and which demonstrated the resilience of the old Anti-Semitism. During many months the population of the city suspected the clothing stores owned by Jews to organize the kidnapping of women in the fitting rooms to sell them abroad. The rumour indicated at the beginning that 26 women were kidnapped and increased. The police reported that no women were kidnapped and was also suspected by the mob. Later the rumour amplified again indicating that a Sub-Marine ship came in the river Loire to embark the kidnapped women. This exaggeration killed the Rumour since Loire is about 1 meter deep in the area.

In 1994, France discovered that René Bousquet who was in charge of the deportation of French Jews to the death camps was a long date close friend of the President François Mitterrand.

XIII - CONCLUSION

The first anti-Semite major act was the dispersion, which took place two millennium ago. The wish to bring Judeo–Christian monotheism and moral to barbarian peoples in a marketable packaging suitable to them was the start of the Creation of a Church which totally lost its link with Jesus ‘Philosophy.

Church made a special “Doctrine”, became thirsty of temporal power and created the concept of God Murder and many similar others which took it far away from Monotheism and Jesus ‘beliefs and lethal for the Jews. Church built in this way the corner stone of Anti-Semitism. With their numerous additives, the Bishops in their multiple Councils made of the Church a tool of violence, Hatred, and intolerance.

The attempt of return to Christianity by Reform was mostly unsatisfactory but is partly the reason, which made of USA a shelter for the Jews.

The strict respect of Monotheism by Islam explained its greater tolerance towards Judaism as compared to Church’s Countries. In Spain before the Reconquista, the cooperation of Islam and Judaism permitted to bring a  bright contribution to the whole civilization.

Church anti-Semitism kept the Jews isolated with a subsidiary and submissive life in the tradition of the homeless wanderer Jew and which was the role they had to play on earth according to Saint Augustine.

This isolation and the traditional contempt paved the way of the new anti-Semitism of 19^th and 20^th centuries based on racist pseudo-scientific theories, when the new enlightened democratic regimes broke the isolation of Jews from the rest of the Society.

Quickly Jews integrated the new freed societies and the success of few of them was considered as unacceptable for those who still considered them as second rank citizens.

Pathologic jealousy and long life hatred of Jews were expected to unify people around the new concept of Nationalism and Race purity in major European countries.

The Church’s doctrine continued to play a part in these new currents by benevolent neutrality and by the good conscience racists may build on the basis of the Church doctrine.

For example Hitler wrote in “Mein Kampf” :”Nature takes revenge when we transgress its commandments, so I think to act in the spirit of the Almighty, our creator, because in defending myself against the Jew, I fight to defend the Lord's work.”

Church’s doctrine gave also good conscience to those who made slaughters before the Racist theories, always in the name of the pagan concept of God-Murder. Massacres were a continuum before the effects of Racist theories, which led the League Of Nations (LON) to request in 1920 the creation of a Shelter for the Jews far from Europe.

From 1940 to 1945, six millions of Christs were crucified in name of Racist theories and with neutrality or active participations of populations used to hatred of Jews spread by the Church. During these events Church kept benevolent neutrality easing the Nazi massacres since Church did not at least request an examination of conscience.

 63% of the Jewish European population was destroyed.

In 1939, 59% of the world Jewish population lived in Europe but if we include the two million of Russians who fled to America from 1881 to 1914, we may say that usually 70% of the Jewish population used to live in Europe and was clearly a part of the European population.

In 2005 this figure decreased dramatically from 70% to 12% as a result of the Holocaust and of the vast immigration to Israel and America.

This figure shows the great victory of European anti-Semitism. Even the allies did not give the deserver importance to the information they received on the Holocaust in progress.

The deplorable History of Church seems to have led Church to make an attempt to discover Christianity from 1962 to 1965 in the frame of the Council Vatican 2: The crucifixion of 6 million of Christs were necessary in order that the Roman Church declared in 1965 in the Encyclical “Nostra Aetate” that the hated Jews became “the beloved brothers” and that the death of Jesus was not the fault of “all” the Jews of Judea and was not the fault of the Jews of today. Despite these good words, the Holy See has accepted the UNO decision of 1947 regarding Israel only in 1993 (near half a century later).

The Encyclical of 1965 came too late and the Church did not cancel the Councils which brought it far away from Christianity.

Church remains intolerant regarding major social current issues e.g. fight against HIV, contraception, abortions, homosexuality and do not want to accept that many priests become pedophile because of the celibacy imposed to them. The lax position of Holy See regarding the prophylactic fight against HIV is criminal since it may involve the death of many people especially in Africa if innocent believers take it into consideration.

Consequently the Church doctrine is progressively disappearing from western countries as a result of improved Education and information.

The advanced social Democracies took the best of Jesus’ Philosophy on the contrary of the Church, which demonstrates that we need not theology or any kind of religions to apply good ideas.

We may hope that Europe, which has now overcome the issues of national prerogatives generating conflicts for the benefit of Union, has acquired sufficiently strong and resilient Ethics.

The Charter of Fundamental Rights is a good start subject to a strict respect of it. Europe must give way to tolerance after its excesses; it must declare outlaw all political parties based on xenophobia; those parties are today bursting everywhere among European members.