Winners of High French Literary Prizes Charged with Anti-semitism

A Jewish member of the jury of the highly respected Prix Femina literary award, resigned last night in protest against a grant of the award to a little known novel which the Jewish member called anti-Semitic.

The all-woman jury of top literary personalities gave the 5,000 franc ($1,000) award by a vote of seven to six to Louise Bellocq for “The Fallen Door.” Mrs. Beatrix Beck was the only opponent among the six to resign. Mrs. Beck, who shared in the Prix Goncourt in 1953, said the novel was anti-Semitic in resigning from the Jury.

Mrs. Bellocq, the author, called the charge “absurd,” Her book is the story of a decaying provincial French family and the disputed passages are statements by the book’s hero, a member of the Resistance, who was quoting Raskolnikov, the hero of Dostoyesky’s “Crime and Punishment.” The passages referred to the Jews “living like lice” in the 19th Century ghettoes of Poland and Austria.

In another French literary development, the winner of the 1960 Goncourt prize, the most significant French literary award, was accused today of having worked for an anti-Semitic newspaper in pre-war Rumania and of having taken an active part in fascist activities during the Nazi occupation.

L’Humanite, the Paris Communist daily, charged that Vintila Horia, who received the Goncourt prize last week, worked for an anti-Semitic Rumanian paper as far back as 1935 and that he had slandered Heine, Albert Einstein and other noted Jews and had praised French and German anti-Semites for their activities. The newspaper said that Horia had been sentenced after the war to life imprisonment by a Rumanian court for his pro-Fascist record.

Horia, who came to Paris to accept the award, commented that “no one can be judged on his past activities” and that “even saints have erred in their youth,” statements which were considered here as an admission that some of the charges were true.