After the Great War, Pope Pius XI did his best to continue improved relations between Catholics and Jews when in 1928 he issued a holy decree that formally condemned hatred of the Jews. Interwar French clergy followed suit and rejected anti-Semitism and as a result, “populist and religious Jew-hatred fell distinctly out of favor” (Zuccotti, 23). Unfortunately, France, along with the rest of Europe, was about to enter yet another period of political and economic unrest that would eventually rock the seemingly amiable feelings about the Jews. Pope Pius XI (Photo: Wikipedia) Between 1906 and 1939, an estimated 200,000 foreign Jews entered France, approximately 82 percent of which were Eastern European Jews escaping Russian pogroms (Zuccotti, 19). These working class Jews settled into distinctly segregated Jewish neighborhoods in France, such as the Marais, where they spoke Yiddish and could not have seemed any less French. Paris, Jewish Quarter (ca. 1933-1939) ...
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