A powerful history of Jewish art collectors in France, and how an embrace of art and beauty was met with hatred and destruction
“Alluring
and disturbing. . . . The depths of French anti-Semitism is the
stunning subject that Mr. McAuley lays bare. . . . [He] tells this
haunting saga in eloquent detail. As French anti-Semitism rises once
again today, the effect is nothing less than chilling.”—Diane Cole, Wall Street Journal
In the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a
number of prominent French Jews—pillars of an embattled
community—invested their fortunes in France’s cultural artifacts,
sacrificed their sons to the country’s army, and were ultimately
rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families
deported to Nazi concentration camps.
In this rich, evocative
account, James McAuley explores the central role that art and material
culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin-de-siècle.
Weaving together narratives of various figures, some familiar from the
works of Marcel Proust and the diaries of Jules and Edmond Goncourt—the
Camondos, the Rothschilds, the Ephrussis, the Cahens d'Anvers—McAuley
shows how Jewish art collectors contended with a powerful strain of
anti-Semitism: they were often accused of “invading” France’s cultural
patrimony. The collections these families left behind—many ultimately
donated to the French state—were their response, tragic attempts to
celebrate a nation that later betrayed them.
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