Baron Edouard de Rothschild, financier, philanthropist, Jewish communal worker and sportsman, died here yesterday. He was 81 years old.
A member of the world-famous banking family, the Baron was active in top banking circles in France for many years. When the Nazis overran France, he fled to the United States with his wife. He later was deprived by the pro-Nazi French Government of his citizenship and his property was confiscated by the Vichy regime.
In the United States, where he arrived in 1940, he was active in war relief work, including the raising of funds for the Russian people. As president of the Consistory of the Jews of France he pressed the fight to restore the Cremieux law, which was abrogated by Vichy. The law, passed in 1870, guaranteed French citizenship to native-born Algerian Jews. When the Allied forces restored the Free French to North Africa, Gen. Henri Giraud, French High Commissioner, formally abrogated the Cremieux law again. Baron de Rothschild protested to the State Department and became embroiled in a controversy with the then Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles who defended Gen. Giraud’s decree.
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.
