Isaac Schneersohn Explained

Isaac Schneersohn should not be confused with Joseph Isaac Schneersohn.

Isaac Schneersohn
Birth Date:1879 or 1881
Birth Place:Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine
Death Date:1969 (age 88 or 90)
Death Place:Paris
Nationality:French
Organization:Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation

Isaac Schneersohn (1879 or 18811969) was a French rabbi, industrialist, and the founder of the first Holocaust Archives and Memorial. He emigrated from Ukraine to France after the First World War.

In 1943 while under Italian wartime occupation, Schneersohn founded a documentation center at his home in Grenoble with representatives from 40 Jewish organizations. The center moved to Paris at Liberation and became the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation. Schneersohn remained President of the CDJC and editor of its Revue until his death in 1969.

Biography

Early life

Isaac Schneersohn was born in Kamenetz-Podolsk, currently in the Ukraine, in 1879 or 1881.

Schneersohn served as a crown rabbi in Horodnia and Chernihiv in northern Ukraine.[1] He was active both socially and politically, becoming involved in community affairs and education, as well as becoming a council member and deputy mayor in Ryazan as a member of the moderate liberal party.

Emigration to France

Originally from the Russian Empire, Isaac Schneersohn emigrated to France in 1920 after the Bolshevik revolution.[2] He was naturalized as a French citizen during the inter-wars years.

In Paris, "His home became a place where Jewish leaders met, many of them Zionists, mostly right-wing Revisionists, as he had become."

Family

Schneersohn had a brother, Dr. Fishel Schneerson[3] and three sons: Boris,[4] Arnold, and Michel, who were mobilized as reserve officers in the French Army. Boris and Arnold were captured and interned at the disciplinary camp at Lübeck. Michel was liberated in August 1940. He then took part in the fight as a member of the Dordogne Maquis.

Career

A descendant of a long line of rabbis and a rabbi by training,[5] Schneersohn decided to go into industry.Schneersohn was Director Delegate of the French: Société Anonyme de Travaux Métalliques in Paris.

He founded the documentation center CDJC in 1943 while in Grenoble, moved it to Paris, and remained director until his death. See section Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation below.

World War II

When World War II broke out, he left Paris for Bordeaux, with his family. In 1941, he settled in Mussidan[6] in the Dordogne.

He was active in the Union générale des israélites de France (UGIF, General Organization of Jews in France). As such, he made numerous trips to Grenoble, where in 1942 the idea grew to create a "Center of Jewish Documentation" (French: Centre de documentation juive), which later became the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation.

The work of the CDJC was interrupted by the German invasion of the Italian zone in September 1943. The members of the CDJC took refuge in the underground. Isaac Schneersohn and Léon Poliakov got back to Paris at the time of the insurrection of August 1944. They succeeded to seize the archives of the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs of the archives of the German Embassy in Paris, of the staff headquarters, and especially of the Anti-Jewish department of the Gestapo.[7]

Death

Schneersohn died in Paris on June 25, 1969 at the age of 88 or 90.[8]

On January 27, 2005, the occasion of the 60th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Schneersohn was remembered by Éric de Rothschild, President of the Mémorial de la Shoah,[9] by the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë,[9] and by President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac. Chirac said that "Isaac Schneersohn was the archivist of the spirit against the bureaucracy of barbarism."

Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation

See main article: article and Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation.

CDJC

In 1946, Schneersohn became President of the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC) and editor of the Revue published by the center, until 1969.

On October 8, 1958, the future Nobel Peace Prize laureate René Cassin presented him with the Cross of the Knight of the Legion of Honor.

His son Arnold became honorary treasurer of the Center after the war. When captive in the Oflag, he had organized a pocket of resistance, which earned him a transfer to the discipline Oflag of Lübeck.

In Paris, he was close to Rabbi David Feuerwerker, who took part in the annual ceremonies at the CDJC on numerous occasions in the presence of the authorities. When Rabbi Feuerwerker became the rabbi of a synagogue in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, Schneersohn and his son Arnold were members of his community.

Schneersohn was synonymous with the CDJC. He personified the institution, which continues to have an important influence worldwide.

The founding meeting in Grenoble

Schneersohn hosted a meeting April 28, 1943, at his residence in Grenoble which was then under Italian occupation to create a Jewish "documentation center" to collect documents and testimony on the situation of Jews during the war.[10] He invited forty delegates of Jewish organizations including Jacob Gordin[11] [12] [13] to the founding meeting.

Without knowing whether he or any of them would even survive the war, Schneersohn was motivated by a desire to accumulate and preserve materials and to write about everything that was happening, as building blocks for historians who would come later.[14]

The documentation center was organized with a seven-member management committee consisting of two representatives of the Consistory (Consistory (Judaism)) (Consistoire central), two representatives of the, one from the World ORT, and one from the rabbinate, with Schneersohn presiding.

Foundation of the CDJC

To accumulate testimonies on the Shoah, Schneersohn together with Léon Poliakov[15] [16] devoted himself to collect documents which served the history of the Jews during the war. The group organized around Schneersohn and Poliakov returned to Paris, during the Liberation of Paris of August 1944, taking possession of the archives of the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs of the Vichy Regime, of those of the German Embassy in Paris, of the German staff headquarters, and of the Anti-Jewish archives of the Gestapo in Paris.[17] [18]

Related institutions

In 1944, the CDJC was thus transferred to Paris. It settled in Le Marais, practically in the Pletzl, the old Jewish neighborhood, an evident symbolism.

The Mémorial du martyr juif inconnu was inaugurated on October 30, 1956.

In 1997, the decision was taken to merge the two institutions: the CDJC and the Mémorial du martyr juif inconnu, to form the Mémorial de la Shoah, which opened on January 27, 2005.

Publications

See also

Sources

External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe . Crown Rabbi . http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Crown_Rabbi . Kaplan Appel . Tamar . 3 August 2010 . YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe . . 9780300119039 . 170203576 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150327120806/http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Crown_Rabbi . 2015-03-27 . 2015-05-31 .
  2. With the arrival of the Bolsheviks.
  3. Web site: Dr. Fishel Schneerson. mentalblog.com. https://web.archive.org/web/20110102045737/http://mentalblog.com/2005/05/dr-fishel-schneerson.html. 2011-01-02. dead.
  4. Boris became honorary vice-president of ORT France. Web site: World ORT Report 2006. www.ort.org. https://web.archive.org/web/20110728100810/http://www.ort.org/ort/woreport/report2006/report2006web.pdf. 2011-07-28. dead.
  5. News: Shoah. Paris se souvient.. Michèle. Leloup. L'Express. January 24, 2005. fr. Shoah. Paris remembers. August 29, 2010. November 20, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20101120151337/http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/histoire/paris-se-souvient_487277.html. dead. . In this interview, Fredj states that Schneersohn abandoned religion to devote himself to other activities: company director, member of the French Resistance. This statement has to be qualified: he didn’t hold a rabbinical post, as he had when younger, but he had not abandoned religion.
  6. Michel Schneersohn was the mayor of that city from 1946 to 1947.
  7. Web site: Isaac Schneersohn, fondateur durant la guerre du Centre de documentation juive contemporaine (CDJC). fr. Isaac Schneersohn, wartime founder of the CDJC. 29 May 2015. ordiecole.com.
  8. Web site: French Bury Isaac Schneersohn; Founded Memorial to Unknown Jewish Martyr in Paris . . Ami Eden . June 30, 1969 . jta.org . . https://web.archive.org/web/20150317231031/http://www.jta.org/1969/06/30/archive/french-bury-isaac-schneersohn-founded-memorial-to-unknown-jewish-martyr-in-paris . March 17, 2015 . March 16, 2015 . Isaac Schneersohn, who founded the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr and a memorial museum of the Nazi Holocaust here, was buried Friday at services attended by Government officials and others. Mr. Schneersohn died last Wednesday at the age of 90..
  9. Web site: Discours de M. Jacques Chirac, Président de la République, à l'inauguration du Mémorial de la Shoah, le 25 janvier 2005. . fr . Speech by M. Jacques Chirac, French President, at the inauguration of the Shoah Memorial . January 25, 2005 . May 30, 2015 . memorialdelashoah.org . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20120826003340/http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/b_content/getContentFromNumLinkAction.do?itemIdP=313&type=1&itemId=313 . August 26, 2012 .
  10. Book: [{{google books|id=E2IhaiQwJQ8C|page=18|title=Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe |plainurl=yes}} Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe ]. Jockusch . Laura . 2012-10-11 . . 9780199764556 . 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764556.001.0001. as quoted in Web site: Khurbn Forshung (destruction research)– Jewish Historical Commissions in Europe, 1943-1949 . Jockusch . Laura . academia.edu . 2015-03-15.
  11. Cf. and Poliakov, testimony of April 28, 1997.
  12. Gordin worked part-time at the library of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and also with Schneersohn to create the CDJC. La reconstruction de la bibliothèque de l'Alliance israélite universelle, 1945-1955.. fr. Jean-Claude. Kuperminc. Les belles lettres. Archives Juives. 2001. 34. 34. 98 - 113. 10.3917/aj.341.0098.
  13. According to lamaisondesevres.org,Web site: Document : Rue Amelot. J.. Jacoubovitch . Jacoubovitch-Bouhana . Gabrielle . lamasondesevres.org . February 15, 2013 . May 29, 2015 . fr . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20220119082749/http://lamaisondesevres.org/ame/ame5.html . 19 January 2022.
  14. Renée. Poznanski. La création du Centre de documentation juive contemporaine en France (avril 1943). fr. Creation of the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation in France (April 1943). Sciences Po University Press. JSTOR : 20th Century. Revue d'Histoire. 63. July–September 1999 . 51 - 63. 10.2307/3770700 . 3770700.
  15. Poliakov knew Schneersohn from before the war. See his testimony of April 28, 1997.
  16. Poliakov was temporarily the secretary of Chief Rabbi Schneour Zalman Schneersohn, Schneersohn's cousin, during the war.
  17. Poliakov discovered the Gestapo archives.
  18. In his testimony of April 28, 1997, Poliakov declared that he was the crux of the CDJC, "without doubt", since without him, there would have been no documents.

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