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L’antisémitisme en procès : Jean Drault devant ses juges (4 novembre 1946)

2016; Les Belles Lettres; Volume: Vol. 49; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3917/aj.492.0042

1965-0531

Grégoire Kauffmann,

Political and Social Issues

On November 14th 1946, the trial of Alfred Gendrot alias Jean Drault (1866-1951), an « elder » of French antisemitism, began in Paris. A former pillar of La Libre Parole, the paper founded in 1892 by Édouard Drumont, the old activist and anti-Jewish journalist had enthusiastically joined the ranks of the collaborationists after the defeat of 1940. Successively director of the pro-German paper La France au travail and Au Pilori, a weekly paper whose purpose was to denounce Jews and thus expose them to persecution, also an influential member of the Institut d’études des questions juives, Jean Drault’s antisemitism bridged the Dreyfus era and the dark years of the 1930s. In the autumn of 1946, just as France was preparing to elect a legislative assembly for the IVth Republic, what significance should we give to the trial of Jean Drault, which drew substantial media attention at that time ? This now forgotten judicial episode casts new light on the ideological heritage of Édouard Drumont and the French public’s perception in the immediate post-War years.