The Jewish presence in France dates back to Gallo-Roman times.
Persecution of the Jews began in the early Middle Ages. In the 20th century, some French Jews, known as ” Israelites “, gradually withdrew from Judaism, opting for assimilation; in some cases, they maintained a more or less regular religious practice.
While some Jews arrived from the East (Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria) in the 1920s, then from Germany and Austria to escape Nazism in the 1930s, most fled Eastern Europe. Originally from countries with a turbulent history, they left Poland and Russia, but also Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Their presence in Eastern Europe dates back to the Middle Ages.
Jews emigrated to France as early as the end of the 19th century, following pogroms, and especially in the 1920s and 1930s, driven from their birthplaces by anti-Semitism, poverty and political repression. They also included students discriminated against at university. In the aftermath of the First World War, France needed a large workforce. These immigrants remained imbued with their culture of origin, but often detached from religious practices.
The Yiddish language is the fundamental, unifying element of this Eastern European Jewish culture. These countries made up what was known as “Yiddishland”, a world of some 8 to 9 million people, now wiped out.
