Lyn Julius
Adolf Cremieux, the Alliance and Romania
Summary
Lyn Julius discusses the life and work of Adolphe Cremieux (1796–1880), a French lawyer and politician who served as the Minister of Justice under the Second Republic and Government of National Defense. Raised Jewish, he served as the president of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, secured French citizenship for Algerian Jews under French rule through the Crémieux Decree, and was a staunch defender of the rights of the Jews of France.
Lyn Julius
Lyn Julius was born in the UK and educated at the French Lycée in London and the University of Sussex. The daughter of Jewish refugees from Iraq, she is a journalist and founder of Harif, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (www.harif.org). Lyn blogs daily at Point of No Return (www.jewishrefugees.org.uk). Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Huffington Post, Jewish News, and Jerusalem Post. She has a regular column in the Times of Israel and JNS News. Her book Uprooted: How 3,000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight has been translated in to Norwegian, Portuguese and Arabic, and a Hebrew version is in progress.
Well, Montparnasse is not actually a Jewish cemetery, but it is quite possible that somebody recited Kaddish for him. And he certainly identified as a Jew all his life, so I think he would be, would’ve been very upset if he hadn’t had some sort of Jewish funeral.
I don’t think they did. One of, one of his granddaughters, actually, well his daughter was a writer and a musician. And his granddaughter, who was called Amelie, married a sculptor called Paul Langowski, who is best known for actually sculpting the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. So that, that shows how far they’ve sort of progressed away from Judaism, really. I don’t think any of them returned to Judaism.
Well, that’s a very good question. I reckon it’s because, well, he’s probably pretty well known in France, so I think that’s probably the answer to that. He’s not well known internationally though, that is absolutely true.