Rabbi Judah Nadich and the Liberation of Paris

Today I’m writing about Judah Nadich because I’m quite excited to learn that the Ratner Center for the Study of Conservative Judaism in New York City has his papers, including the sermon he delivered at the liberation of Paris in 1944 when the synagogues in Paris were reopened.  The last chapter in Betrayal: Bombing Synagogues on the Streets of Paris, Igniting the French Holocaust will be about Rabbi Nadich and the Jewish Community at liberation. 

For those of you who don’t know, the French collaborated with the Germans during World War II to deport Jews to death camps in the East, most often Auschwitz-Birkenau.  I teach classes (Annette) tied to the French Holocaust and last March took a group of 11 students to Paris and Auschwitz in a Study Abroad course called “Paris/Auschwitz.” France’s pre-war Jewish population was about 350,000.  Roughly 76,000-78,000 Jews were deported and of those, 2500 returned.  Included in the deportation figure were 11,000 children.  France granted religious toleration to Jews and Protestants in the same legislation passed during the French Revolution---hence our book is entitled “Betrayal.”

Nadich’s entry into this book on French history is fascinating.  The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Nadich (1912-2007) was raised in Baltimore (my pseudo-home)  before receiving numerous degrees (inclusive of an MA in history from Columbia) and becoming a rabbi.  During World War II Rabbi Nadich served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the U.S. Army and the Senior Jewish Chaplain in Europe.  At the liberation of Paris he was the senior ranking religious officer and later advised General Eisenhower, particularly on the issue of Jewish Displaced Persons.  He spend most of his post-war life as head Rabbi of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City where he advocated for the ordination of women in the Conservative Jewish faith. 

Last summer when I was working at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, I listened to Rabbi Nadich’s video testimony and he spoke movingly of opening the Grande Synagogue on the Rue de la Victoire in Paris and delivering a sermon overwhelmed by the sounds of weeping----emotions tied to the exhilaration of freedom and the devastation of loss. 

http://forward.com/articles/11504/rabbi-judah-nadich-eisenhower-adviser-/