Wilhelm Filderman et la France avant la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale. Quelques documents inédits
Wilhelm Filderman and France Before World War II. Some Unpublished Documents

Summary/Abstract: France was omnipresent in the life, activity and writings of Wilhelm Filderman (1882-1963), the leader of Romanian Jewry before the Holocaust. He was an admirer of France and its “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizens”. It was not surprising that he intervened by the French government and diplomats as well as by the French Jews in defense of his Romanian coreligionists’ rights. Newly discovered documents illustrate his efforts in this direction. He remained faithful to the policy of shtadlanut, to the system of petitions, thus following one of the aspects of the interventionist policy of the main French Jewish organisation, Alliance Israélite Universelle, with which he maintained close relations. Perceived as an “assimilationist Jew” by the Zionists and constantly denigrated by its leaders, he ended by accepting that the Union of Romanian Jews, which he presided, would sign an agreement with the Jewish Party, thus creating in 1936, the Central Council of Romanian Jews, to better combat “State antisemitism”. His admiration and love for France explain his final departure for this country in 1948, on the eve of his arrest in Bucharest by agents of the new totalitarian communist regime.

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