The Survival of the Jews in France by Jacques Semelin

Author:Jacques Semelin
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Becoming Catholic

Jewish refugees understood that they had to give up every manifestation of their faith in order to facilitate being accepted by the local villagers. Deep in the French countryside, they were surrounded by Christian families and living in the heart of parishes that were for the most part Catholic. In this part of their lives, as in all other areas, their stance was one of caution and concealment, although this did not eliminate danger entirely. Many parents went even further to protect their children, enrolling them in catechism classes or allowing them to be baptized. Some let their children be placed in religious institutions (schools, boarding schools or monasteries) where they were in theory safe from police checks and inquisitive prying. Male children of Jewish families who lived outside these institutions were particularly vulnerable to a specific danger, as noted by a refugee who lived in the Auvergne during that period: “There was one constant risk we had to deal with, physical and intimate, that wasn’t immediately visible, but meant that we could find ourselves imperiled at any moment: we were circumcised,” Albert recalled.76

The majority of refugees from central Europe, many of whom were communists, were not practicing Jews. They had few qualms when it came to taking the decision to send their children to catechism classes or church services. Since France was a majority Catholic country, the social immersion of foreign Jews was based on the assumption that they would take on the other sign of Frenchness: the dominant religious culture of the country. Jacques and Simon Benayoun, who were sent to live with a Normandy farming family in 1944, dutifully attended mass, just as they had uncomplainingly attended synagogue in Paris. They explained their ignorance of the liturgy by claiming that their father was Muslim. Some children were forced to convert to Catholicism, a subject of intense controversy in the post-war period, particularly around the time of the Finaly affair.77 Research on the subject has shown that cases of forced conversion were rare. Nonetheless, many of those who lived through the persecution have testified that when they applied to enter a Catholic institution, it was on condition that they be baptized, as was the case for both Alfred Grosser and Saul Friedländer. These children’s experiences of becoming Catholic often left them with striking memories. Often their identities were unsettled, as was the case for Saul Friedländer, who was placed in a Catholic boarding school in Montluçon at the age of 9. This experience, coming at the same time as the abrupt separation from his parents, was deeply traumatic. Desperately worried about the safety of their son, his parents had agreed to send him to live in a Catholic institution, after his father had signed a letter allowing his son to be baptized and to receive a Catholic education. “As I entered the portals of Saint-Béranger, the boarding school of the Sodality where I was to live from now on, I became someone else.” Pavel became Paul-Henri Ferland,

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