French Jewry
Liberté. Égalité. Fraternité.
To the survivors of French Jewry, these words are the ultimate irony. These words do not mean anything for Jews in France. They reflect only for Frenchmen and women. The liberation that was started by Napoléon was seen as nothing more but brief light in the wake of anti-semitism. The spirit of the Dreyfus Affair was resurrected under Charles Maurras and his damnable Action Française.
The Jewish contribution to France was ignored, in arts, politics, literature, culture... and then came Maurras. Action Française. The camps. The pogroms started and enthusiastically carried out by the French and their collaborators. Even mainstream French politicians, not previously touched by anti-semitism, denounced the Jews.
In 1939, there was just over 300,000 Jews in France, many of the recent influx were from Russian and Polish Jews fleeing pogroms; and just over one hundred thousand living in France's colonial territories, notably Algeria. By 1944, the end of the war, there was less than 150,000 Jews left in France. By 1964, there would be over 25,000. And try as they might, the French government was unable to stem the tide of Jews fleeing the country.
Charles Maurras, the leader of Action Française, was relegated to the position of Devil incarnate on the European continent. The camps established the belief that the Jews, no matter what, could not be integrated into French society; that they were and always would be others. For Maurras, he targeted the notable four others: Jews, Protestants, Freemasons, and "métèques".
While the monarchy was restored in 1931 under Charles d'Orleans [1], the death of democracy became final. Jacques Doriot, Leon Daudet, Philippe Henriot, and Louis Darquier become household names, sparking terror with the French secret police knocking on the doors of Jews in the middle of the night.
The camps established in the Algerian desert, which the French government refused to comment on until the defeat in 1944, had but one purpose: to disappear the "métèques" to stop them from "contaminating" France. Parallels between France and Confederate States are made repeatedly during the war, particularly in the United States and Germany.
When the Germans dropped the first superbomb onto Paris, the shockwaves resonated across Europe. The destruction of most of the French political and military leadership, as well as the king Charles XI, saw the remaining remnants seize control. General Philippe Petain, one of the few successful French generals in the war, organized the three-week process of surrendering to the Central Powers. On July 15, 1944 (one day after the surrender of the Confederate States), the French surrendered.
The monarchy was abolished. Maurras and his fellows were arrested by German soldiers, and executed for their crimes. And in Lyons, the provisional French Fourth Republic was sworn in under President Édouard Daladier and Prime Minister Jean-Baptiste Schuman [2].
At the end of the war, just under 150,000 French Jews survived. And between 1944 and 1964: over seventy percent fled for either the United Kingdom, Palestine, or Quebec. Algerian Jews also fled largely for Palestine, seeking stability - and the Ottoman Empire's new programs which required skilled workers worked in pulling 60% of Algerian Jews; the rest fled for Quebec (and settled in Ville de Quebec or Trois Rivieres).
For the French Jews who remained, the disgust they had for the words of the Revolution became etched into their bones. The provisional French government in Lyons apologised for the rampant persecution, disappearing, and murder of French Jews, and paid restitution. But the Jews of France did not forget. And it took years for even the glimmer of forgiveness to appear.
[1] Taken from Craigo's Part 1 on Charles XI
[2] OTL Robert Schuman
