Giraud’s Abrogation of Cremieux Decree Denounced by Fighting French

The French National Committee of Gen. de Gaulle today issued a statement denouncing the abrogation by Gen. Giraud of the Cremieux Decree and emphasizing that this action by Gen. Giraud has deprived certain categories of native Algerian Jews of rights which were recognized even by the Vichy regime. The statement, cabled from London to the New York Post, reads:

“The National Committee takes the stand of integral respect for republican legality. It has re-established the laws of the republic in all of the territories freed since 1940 from the hands of the enemy. It cannot, therefore, associate itself with a measure which to a category of Frenchmen the rights that the republic gave them. The pure and simple abrogation of the Cremieux Decree deprives the native Algerian Jews, even certain categories exempted by Vichy, such as the war veterans, of their political and civil rights.

“The suppression of these rights effects the result of submitting the Jews, against their will, to the Mosaic laws and of taking away from them the protection of the French civil laws which they have enjoyed for three quarters of a century. Equality between the natives of Algeria – Mussulmans or Jews – cannot be conceived as a demotive levelling. Only a great amelioration of the legal status of all the natives of Algeria, and a revision in a liberal sense of the attribution of political rights can allow its realization.”