Complex compatriots: Jews in post-Vichy French Algeria

Abstract

In 1870, the entire Arabic-speaking Jewish population of 30,000 living North of the Sahara became French citizens overnight through the so-called Crémieux Decree. They were never accepted by the European settlers as one of their own, despite a shared French status. Weathering the sustained anti-Semitism in Algeria and the persecution of the Vichy government, Algerian Jews remained committed to their French status throughout the Algerian War. However, this was not a simple nationalist consciousness. This article revisits the period of the 1950s to examine the impact that the Vichy regime's abrogation of the Crémieux Decree and revocation of Jewish citizenship had on Algerian Jews. After World War II, educated French Jews in Algeria became aware of the fragility of the Crémieux Decree. They actively engaged with the World Jewish Congress (WJC), which came to their aid after Vichy, and took interest in their place among Jews worldwide. During the Algerian War, as the Zionists of the WJC, Jewish agencies, the Front de Libération Nationale, the Israeli government and radical right militants courted Jewish favour, Algerian Jews were compelled to answer in various ways to the pull and push of political ideologies and movements. The article recognises the importance of the imbricated national consciousness of Jews during the Algerian War as adherents of imperial France, as ‘faithful children of Crémieux’, and as Jews who were attached to their Algerian and French heritage.