Abrogation of Cremieux Law is “crime Against France,” Says Leading French Scientist

General Henri Honore Giraud’s abrogation of the Cremieux law for Algeria, which has become the subject of controversy involving the State Department, drew condemnation today as “an iniquity and a crime against France” from a leading French scientist now in the United States. He is Professor Franais Henri Perrin, professor of physics at the Sorbonne in Paris and visiting professor at Columbia University, a son of the late Jean Perrin, Nobel prize winner and onetime president of the French Academy of Science.

“It is not possible to state in a few words all the reasons for my indignation when I read in the speech of General Giraud that he had decided to abrogate the Cremieux decree,” Prof, Perrin said in a statement. “Firstly, General Giraud has no right, when he pretends to return to Republican legality, to repeal one of the oldest laws of the French Republic, maintained during 70 years by all the Republican governments whatever their political slant– a law of great importance in the only part of France now liberated.

“Secondly, from the point of view of fundamental rights, it is difficult to admit that the few Algerian Jews born before 1870 and still living, to whom French citizenship had been granted by the Cremieux law could be deprived of this citizenship (except in individual cases as a penalty for criminal activities.) But it is certainly a scandalous violation of the basic laws of the French constitution, and indeed, of the constitution of any civilized country, to deprive a group of born citizens of their citizenship — and most of the French Jews in Algeria are now born French citizens.

“Thirdly, the word ‘natives’ applied to Algerian Jews is purposely deceitful. The Algerian Jews have enjoyed French citizenship for three generations, they have been taught in French schools, they have fought as French soldiers during the first and second World Wars, they have fully acquired French civilization, they speak French, they think and feel as other Frenchmen, they are French. The Arabs who desired to keep, mostly for religious reasons, their old customs, laws and language, may be called natives, they are the majority in North Africa and the situation of the French minority will be difficult it more political rights are too quickly extended to the Arabs. In such a situation, to try to reduce the Frech groups to a still smaller minority is tantamount to displacing the equilibrium dangerously.

“Fourthly, the abrogation by Giraud of the Cremieux decree, is an iniquity and a crime against France, and will render much more difficult the agreement with General de Gaulle and the reconstruction of French unity. It has only mean political reasons. Aside from and expression of anti-Semitism, it is a means to get rid immediately of the Jews who were elected before the war as members of governmental assemblies, and to eliminate a group of electors which in the majority supported the liberal and more democratic parties. Even if some of them could recover their citizenship before the next election, many would still be unable to vote, and it would give the reactionary parties a considerable advantage in a region in which they are already abnormally strong.

“Perhaps the following comparison may help some Americans to understand the meaning of the decision taken by General Giraud: If the fear of the electoral influence of a Catholic group in Texas led to a law depriving of their citizenship all the American citizens of Spanish origin whose ancestors had become citizens when Texas was integrated into the United States, and if this law was presented as suppressing some racial discrimination between the Spanish Americans and the Indians, such a law would be similar to the abrogation of the Cremieux decree.”