Abrogation of Cremieux Law Contrary to Laws of Republic, Fighting French Leader Says

The Giraud action, he said, deprives 80,000 Algerian Jews of the right to participate in any municipal or parliamentary elections and prevents them from exercising the duties of magistrates, of administrators of mixed communes, of government secretaries and other functions. Jews who had been members of municipal councils or the Conseils Generaux will, under the Giraud edict, not he able to resume their duties. They will also be deprived of seats in the important Delegations Financieres, body which controls taxation. Hence while Arabs, as natives who rejected French citizenship because they did not want to give up their so-called personal status entitling them to have recourse to Moslem Law, are represented in the councils and the taxation body, Jews, as disenfranchised natives, will have no voice in those bodies.

Under the Giraud decree, the Jews in Algeria must continue to be subject to French law wherever personal status and military service are concerned. Arabs, on the other hand, while enjoying civil rights now denied the Jews, are not subject to French law unless they choose to apply for citizenship. They have had the right to do this since 1865, under a law further liberalized in 1919, provided they gave up their personal status permitting them polygamy and other privileges, but few have availed themselves of the opportunity.

The Fighting French jurist described as Nazi-inspired the argument that Moslems were jealous of the Jews in Algeria, contending that they sought to increase their political rights rather than abolish those of the Jews.

“Besides,” he said, “the Moslems seeing the Jews deprived of rights they possessed for 70 years are bound to fear that similar measures may one day be taken against them.”