Three Famous Jews Have Become the Issue of a Public Controversy

Three famous Jews, all of whom have been dead for years, have become the center of a public controversy. The French Minister for Culture has commissioned statues of Leon Blum, Pierre Mendes-France and Alfred Dreyfus but has not yet found what he believes to be suitable sites to erect them.

The Minister, Jack Lang, charges the Mayor of Paris with obstruction, but the Mayor, Jacques Chirac, says his opposition to the chosen enplacements is due strictly to technical and municipal reasons.

The statue of Blum, who served twice as French Prime Minister, first as head of the Popular Front before World War II and again in 1946, was commissioned last year and is now ready. Lang had planned to have it set in the Leon Blum Square, close to the Place de la Republique, which is a traditional Jewish area.

Chirac, who is also one of the main Gaullist contenders for the Presidency, has barred this plan. The Paris City Hall says that the entire square is currently being redesigned in view of massive traffic and several building sites in the area. The renovation will be finished in 1986, according to the city spokesman, when the statue could be erected.

Socialist political sources quoted by the local press say Chirac does not want the statue of a Socialist leader, and one still popular with the masses, on the eve of next year’s legislative elections. The site chosen by Lana is right across the city’s 11th District Town Hall, which is headed by a Gaullist mayor close to Chirac. The 10 feet high bronze statue is already on display on a temporary location in the gardens of the Louvre Museum of National Art.

Another controversial statue is that dedicated to Premier Pierre Mendes-France. Lang wants it erected on a central Paris Avenue, Chirac has not yet decided where and when the statue will be set. Mendes-France was also a Socialist and the current administration of President Francois Mitterrand often refers to him as a spiritual and intellectual guide. The Gaullist and centrist opposition fears that a statue dedicated to him would eventually benefit the Socialist coalition.

The statue of a third Jew, that of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, who was accused of high treason and rehabilitated nearly a century ago, is the subject of a split between Lang and his fellow Defense Minister Charles Hernu. Lang wants the statue erected within the French military academy, L’ecole Militaire — while Hernu favors the site of the former Ecole Polytechnique, an engineering school Dreyfus attended.

The usually reliable weekly, Le Canard Enchaine, quoted Hernu as having told his aides that it would be unwise “to put before the army’s eyes the symbol of its past mistake.”

The Mitterrand Administration has commissioned some 200 statues and many of these have not yet found a proper site. The City Hall is reportedly reluctant to allocate a site along one of Paris’ main avenues to poet Aragon, a life-long member of the French Communist Party, or to philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, the symbol in France of anti-establishment thinking.

Socialist circles point out that right wing writers or politicians, honored by the government, have all found choice spots: former President Georges Pompidou on the City’s Central Avenue des Champs Elysees, and former Foreign Minister Robert Schumann in an elegant residential district.