The problem of restoring Jewish property in France to former owners who were deported by the Germans from the country during the occupation is becoming more and more complicated as many of the deportees are beginning to return to their homes.
The French newspaper Aube which is not anti-Semitic and is also not linked up with the organization of Frenchmen who oppose the restoration of confiscated Jewish property, came out today with a sharp protest against the expulsion of a Frenchman from his dwelling for the benefit of a Jew who is the legal owner of the place.
Featuring its protest on the front page, the French newspaper reports that the expelled Frenchman was a government official, a father of three children, who was assigned to service in Paris in 1943. He rented a house which before the war belonged to a Jewish couple who had left Paris at the outbreak of the war and did not come back under the German occupation. The house was then seized by the Commissariate for Jewish affairs which the Vichy government established and was sold. Now the Jewish owner has appeared with a court order rescinding the sale and authorizing the immediate expulsion of the tenant.
“Is it logical,” the paper asks, “to expel without notice a family which was not cognizant with the conditions of the sale of the Jewish property?” The article draws special attention to the fact that the Jewish owner of the house was not even deported “but has been able to live normally during six years in the French province.”
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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.
