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NEWS
French Interior Ministry Requires Certification of
Jewishness to Verify French Citizenship
By Arnon Yaffeh, Paris
"Only when my grandmother showed her ID card from the Vichy
Regime which had the word 'Juive' [Jew] stamped in
large letters across it, was I allowed to renew my French ID
card," a French Jew told Liberation. According to
dozens of reports, the French Interior Minister is requiring
both Jews and non-Jews from North Africa and other groups to
submit a certificate of Jewishness to prove their French
citizenship. Human rights groups have complained about the
discrimination between Jews and Arabs in the officially
secular country.
The current story began with Brigitte Abutbol, who was born
in 1950 in Algeria and wanted to renew her ID card. Among the
documents a clerk at the St. Denis Municipality demanded to
see was a certificate of Jewishness. "Your name has a Jewish
ring to it," he told her. "It would be best if you produced a
certificate of your Jewishness as well."
According to the clerk the reason for the certificate was to
verify that Abutbol was Jewish, thereby confirming she was a
descendent of a family that had obtained French citizenship
in 1870 based on an order Adolf Cremier, a Jew, had secured
from the government at the time, which granted French
citizenship to all Algerian Jews. Abutbol, like many
assimilated Jews, was insulted that the French state was
demanding a certificate of Jewishness to prove her French
identity and has gone without an ID card to this day.
Since her story was published, dozens of Jews and non-Jews
have come forward with similar accounts. If the name of a
person coming in to renew his ID card sounds Jewish, he is
likely to be sent to the rabbinate to bring a certificate of
Jewishness. Another Frenchman asked to produce a certificate
of Jewishness was not aided by the information that his
grandfather had fought in World War I and his father was
killed in World War II as a French soldier, and he himself
had served as a paratrooper. Only intervention by the State
Comptroller's Office helped him secure an ID card.
Interestingly enough, the request is not only directed at
those who immigrated from North Africa. A Jewish woman born
in 1919 in Poland and who received French citizenship in 1921
after her parents fled from pogroms and sought shelter in
France was also forced to produce "a French-national
certificate," which was issued in 1942 by the Vichy
government. The word "Juive" was stamped in bold print.
The clerk was astonished to see it. Others who did not prove
their Jewishness were told to return to their country of
origin. One said that even 40 years after receiving French
citizenship he felt like an undocumented immigrant.
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