A French civil court convicted today the publishers of the Larousse Encyclopedia on charges of slandering the memory of the late Leon Blum and ordered payment of damages of 1,000 French francs ($200) to Robert Blum, son of the late French statesman.
Robert Blum had sued the Encyclopedia firm for publication of an article asserting that the one-time French Premier’s real name was “Karfulkelstein.” In the suit, it was claimed that during Leon Blum’s lifetime, fascists and other anti-Semites had contended that this was his real name to “expose him as a foreign Jew.”
The publishers had pleaded that the responsibility for the slanderous article rested on one of the contributors but the court rejected that defense, holding that the publishers had been guilty of failing to check material slated for publication.
The fact that more than 660,000 uncorrected encyclopedias were in circulation also was raised against the publishers. When the most recent edition appeared two years ago, Jewish and French liberal spokesmen strongly protested against the article on Blum and, at that time, the publishers pledged themselves to recall encyclopedias still on sale to correct the entry but did not do so.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
