Antisemitism in France

Jews have been living in France since the Roman times as one of the oldest diasporas in Europe.^[1]

As France became Christianized in the late antiquity, Christian antisemitism shaped the region's culture and led to over 1,500 years of persecutions of Jews in France.^[1] Despite the end of the Holocaust in 1945, antisemitism is still common in 21st century France.^[2]

Under the Germanic Frankish Merovingian dynasty between the 5th and 8th century, Jews were banned from working as public servants.^[1] A succession of ecumenical councils also banned Jews from socializing with Christians or observing the shabbat over the unfounded fear that Judaism (the Jewish ethnoreligion) would influence Christians.^[1]

Systematic persecutions of Jews intensified in the 11th century under the Capetian dynasty, when the King of France Robert the Pious tried to kill all Jews who rejected Christian conversion.^[1][3] Jews across the France were assaulted, tortured or burned at stakes.^[1][3] The persecutions coincided with the destruction of the original Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in 1009, which was exploited by French Benedictine monk Rodulfus Glaber to spread rumors about Jewish "involvement" in the destruction.^[4]

When the First Crusade happened in 1096, Jews were massacred by the crusaders across the Kingdom of France.^[3][4] The events were seen by some historians as a series of genocidal massacres.^[5] The massacres all happened with Roman Catholic Church's tacit approval.^[4][5]

Between the 1182 and 1394, at least 13 expulsions of Jews were ordered by the French monarchy,^[6] during which dozens of Black Death-associated massacres of Jews happened.^[7]

Between the 15th century and 18th century, antisemitism in France waxed and waned.^[8] Voltaire (1694–1778), a famous French philosopher, held bias against Jews that contributed to the legitimization of antisemitism in Western academia.^[9][10] One of the instances of Voltaire's antisemitism was his insertion of an insult into his Dictionnaire philosophique for Jewish readers:^[9]

Despite this, he was regarded as the champion of Enlightenment by Western leftists.^[10]

Antisemitism was widespread in 19th century France.^[1] It was present across the political spectrum, with ancient stereotypes being phrased differently and perpetuated by their respective audience.^[11] Jews were targeted for their otherness, observance of Judaism and alleged lack of loyalty or assimilation.^[11]

Among the French far left, Jews were accused of being regressive agents of capitalism exploiting the French proletariat.^[11] Among the French far right, Jews were accused of being subversive agents of communism undermining the traditional Catholic culture.^[11] Meanwhile, both the far left and far right saw Jews as undesirable under French nationalism, which prioritized national unity over minority existence.^[11][12]

Between 1882 and 1885, three antisemitic publications existed in France: L'Anti-Juif, L'Anti-Sémitique, and Le Péril sociale.^[1] In 1886, French politician Edouard Drumont published the 1,200-page tract La France juive ("Jewish France"), accusing Jews of masterminding capitalism, and calling for a race war between non-Jewish "Aryans" and Jewish "Semites". The tract was very popular in France and reprinted for 140 times within the first two years of publication.^[9]

The wave of antisemitism peaked in the deeply divisive Dreyfus affair in 1894, when Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jewish artillery officer, was falsely convicted of treason.^[12] Dreyfus was not vindicated until 1906.^[11][12]

On 22 June 1940, France surrendered to Nazi Germany upon military defeat and was partitioned into the German-occupied zone, Italian-occupied zone and Vichy France – a rump state in southern France managed by pro-Nazi French collaborators.^[13] Under Vichy France's leaders Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval, the Statut des Juifs ("Jewish Statute") – modelled after the Nazi German Nuremberg Laws – was passed between October 1940 and June 1941 to ban Jews from all jobs.^[13]

Just as in Nazi Germany, such legal persecution escalated to the deportation of Jews to extermination camps,^[13] one of the worst instances of which was the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup on 16–17 July 1942 voluntarily conducted by the Vichy French police.^[13] In total, 77,000 (33%) Jews living in France were killed in extermination camps.^[13][14]

Antisemitism in post-war France mainly took the form of Holocaust denial and radical anti-Zionism. Pierre Guillaume, an ultra-left anarcho-Marxist activist, published books denying the Holocaust, calling it a "distraction from class struggle" that "played into the hands of Zionism and Stalinism".^[15]

Despite being left-wing, Guillaume's views were adopted by the French far right,^[15] who have trivialized the Holocaust by comparing the Holocaust to the Judean massacres of the Canaanites^[15] or the Native American genocide,^[16] and accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust to extort compensations from European countries.^[17]

A number of influential French Holocaust deniers emerged, such as Claude Autant-Lara,^[16] Maurice Bardèche,^[17] Louis-Ferdinand Céline,^[18] Paul Rassinier,^[19] François Duprat,^[20] Serge Thion,^[21] Robert Faurisson,^[22] and Dieudonné M'bala M'bala.^[23]

Antisemitism is still common in 21st century France,^[2] with Jews and synagogues regularly attacked.^[2] A report by Tel Aviv University and the ADL found a spike in antisemitic incidents from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023, 74% of which happened following 7 October 2023.^[24] As per the Statista, 57.4% of 2023 antisemitic incidents happened in Paris.^[25] Some French Jews said that they had to adopt fake names and wear keffiyehs in order to stay safe.^[26]

One of the most serious antisemitic incidents involved a 12-year-old Jewish girl being gang-raped by several boys.^[27] In June 2025, a French court sentenced three teens to jail, ruling that the rape was driven by antisemitism based on the teens' use of slurs like "dirty Jew".^[28]

• Antisemitism in Spain
• Antisemitism in Ireland
• Antisemitism in Europe