Monday 4 January 2010

Albert Camus on antisemitism

Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Albert Camus. He understood what anti-Semitism and the denial of anti-Semitism (in the meantime packaged as anti-Zionism) are :

"In your every day life, you can be sure you will invariably come across a Frenchman who, incidentally, is likely to be intelligent and who will tell you that Jews exaggerate. Naturally, he has a Jewish friend, who at least … He does not, in the least, approve of the torture and burning of millions of Jews. Nevertheless, he thinks that Jews exaggerate and that they are wrong to stick together, even though their solidarity is the result of their concentration camp experience."


A. Camus (1913-1960), French writer and philosopher
"La Contagion", Combat, 10.5.1947. Quoted in La France et les Juifs : De 1789 à nos jours, by Michel Winock, Seuil, 2004

Translated by P.