Baron Edouard de Rothschild, president of the Consistoire Central des Israelites de France et d’Algerie, central administrative body of French Jewry since 1808, today issued the following statement:
“General Giraud’s interesting speech raises great hopes and contains many encouraging and gratifying elements. Nevertheless, it is most difficult to understand its full meaning with regard to the Jewish question. It gives rise to a feeling of anxiety among all those who have been victims of the racial laws and among the miserable human beings tortured by the Nazis. This move in the right direction is so muddled, so filled with disconcerting phraseology that all sorts of doubts and suspicions are aroused.
“With regard to the Cremieux Decree of 1870 which bestowed French citizenship on all the Jews then living in Algeria under French sovereignty, it should be pointed out that its abrogation arbitrarily and illegally deprives of their citizenship French citizens, born on French soil, whose ancestors were citizens of France. The annulment of the Cremieux Dacree proves the desire of some of the leading personalities in Algeria to attempt to maintain anti-Semitism in North Africa, which can only lead to unfortunate complications and thus hinder the so eagerly desired unity of all Frenchmen. This development will have a detrimental effect on the prosecution of the war. The most undesirable elements of the Vichy regime have succeeded in confusing General Giraud and in misleading him entirely. It cannot be otherwise.
“French citizens, descendants of the Jews who were naturalized under the Cremieux Decree in 1870, do not derive their citizenship from the decree and therefore cannot be affected by its abrogation, because they are citizens by birth. Therefore its cancellation which emulates the Vichy law of February, 1942 – constitutes a great injustice. The most sacred rights of citizenship are retroactively violated by the abrogation of the Cremieux Decree. Any future election in Algeria will have no meaning and will be null and void since a great number of French citizens are now unlawfully deprived of the right to vote.
“All those French Jews born in Africa have now been forced into an economic and social status far below that of the Arabs of the French Empire. It is with grief and indignation that I protest against such a state of affairs. I hope and trust that my words will be heeded in the highest quarters. Such evil must be prevented at all costs.”
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