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Hi. I'm Jesse Alexander.

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Thank you for supporting this companion episode of Glory and Defeat.

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A while back we talked about Jews in the Prussian Army,

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so today we're going to talk about Jews in the French Army.

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French Jews served in the ranks and as officers like

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15-year-old Fonteira volunteer on Iran or Brigadier General Leopold Singh.

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Like their German counterparts,

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French Jewish soldiers also faced discrimination that cast a long historical shadow.

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The French Republic released a decree in 1870,

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making it far easier for Algerian Jews to

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become citizens than non-Jewish Algerian natives,

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which inflames tensions and resentment.

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The Judaism in the army eventually erupted in the famous Dreyfus affair in 1894,

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and the falsely accused Jewish officer was only cleared after

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years of struggle and the intervention of French intellectuals like Emile Zola.

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The deportation of French Jews in World War II under

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the Vichy regime is also connected to the

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habitual and institutional anti-Judaism of the Third Republic and its armed forces.

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Thanks again for supporting Glory and Defeat.

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I'll see you next week.
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Another was Isidor Michel of the DTM regime from fries dwarf in Logan.

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Michel was taken prisoner,

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but subsequently died of typhus in the Ludwigsburg prison camp in October 1870.

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He was buried in the local Jewish cemetery in the same grave as

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German Jewish soldier Henry Hiedemann who had died of his wounds.

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In 1873, a small dedication service was held for their common memorial marker,

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which was attended by town officials and the local garrison.

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Rabbi Kahn presided and found touching words for a former enemy.

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Isidor Michel, who fought against us under the enemy army,

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was brought in as a prisoner before Metz,

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and succumbed here to typhus.

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He served his fatherland as a patriot and even in

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the enemy we must honor the love for his people and for his homeland.

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In death, we are all equal,

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in the cemetery and in the community of spirits all enmity ceases.

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Michel and Heidemann's monument in the Jewish cemetery survived the Nazi era and

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still bears witness to a time when peaceful Jewish life in Europe was conceivable.