Bidspirit auction | ”Frenchmen!... We Must Become [French]

”Frenchmen!... We Must Become [French] Again” - An Exceptionally Virulent Antisemitic Publication from Occupied France. Paris, [1941]. First edition - Français!... Il faut redevenir (”Frenchmen!... We Must Become [French] Again”) - An exceptionally virulent antisemitic propaganda booklet published by the Institute for the Study of Jewish Questions (Institut d'Étude des Questions Juives – IEQJ), which operated under the auspices of the Nazi occupation authorities and the Vichy regime. The booklet portrays Jews as parasites to be eradicated and throughout deliberately distorts quotations from Jewish literature. Paris, [1941]. First edition. Extremely rare. ”We live in reality and suffer from the revolting parasitism of the Jews. This dreadful tyranny must disappear; we intend to rid ourselves of it as quickly as possible...” (from the introduction). The booklet's cover presents its title in a distorted expression of French nationalism, featuring a large yellow Star of David with the word ”Juif” (”Jew”) at its center in a typeface designed to imitate primitive Hebrew lettering, closely resembling the Yellow Star that Jews in France would be compelled to wear shortly thereafter. Above the Star of David appears the blunt slogan: ”Read the terrible diagnosis of our illness: the virus is the Jew - quickly!” Beneath it is a warning likening the Jews to a malignant disease, declaring that there are illnesses from which one suffers without realizing it until it is too late, just like cancer. The booklet addresses the French reader directly and employs a structured framework of pseudo-scholarly and political quotations intended to ”prove” the antisemitic theories advanced by its authors. It calls upon the French citizen, portrayed as a member of the nation's elite and a patriot, to abandon selfishness and indifference, urging him to recognize that the Jew is a harmful outsider whose presence cannot be ignored. From this premise, it argues that the nation's elite bears the responsibility of leading France in confronting what it terms ”the Jewish Question.” Throughout the booklet, the Jewish people are portrayed as a nation without a territory, allegedly functioning as a ”parasite” within the countries in which they reside. The work deliberately employs pseudo-biological and extreme racist terminology, advancing a conspiracy theory according to which rabbis, guided by Talmudic laws, are orchestrating a campaign for world domination, the dispossession of other peoples of their property, and the systematic infiltration of key positions of financial, media, and political power in France and beyond. In support of these accusations, the booklet presents brief quotations extracted from journals, books, and speeches by prominent Jewish figures and well-known historical personalities. Among those quoted, typically in short passages removed from their original context, are Benjamin Disraeli, Theodor Herzl (see below), Max Nordau, Walther Rathenau, Karl Marx, Louis Lévy, and others. These quotations are presented in a manipulative fashion beneath the prominently printed names of their purported authors, accompanied by the word ”Jew” in parentheses, in order to create the false impression of a ”self-confession” by Jewish leaders and thinkers regarding the allegedly secretive, alien, or ambitious nature of the Jewish people, thereby serving the booklet's overall propagandistic purpose. Under the heading ”Dispositif des Citations” (”Arrangement of the Quotations”), the booklet presents what amounts to a thematic table of contents listing the various ”charges” leveled against the Jews. This index divides the subsequent chapters into predetermined categories such as ”The Talmud, ” ”The Jewish Conspiracy, ” ”The Plan for World Domination, ” ”The International of Gold, ” ”The Communist International, ” and ”Great Massacres: Revolutions and Total Wars.” This structure was intended to create the impression, for the French reader, of a systematic and scholarly study that purportedly linked seemingly contradictory phenomena such as financial capitalism and revolutionary communism, presenting both as components of a single global Jewish conspiracy. In an effort to substantiate these claims, the booklet's authors completely distort Theodor Herzl's sociological analysis from his book The Jewish State (L'État Juif). They quote passages in which Herzl discusses how antisemitism follows Jewish migration and how the Jews constitute a single people, maliciously presenting these observations as a ”confession” by the Zionist leader that the Jews themselves bring hatred wherever they settle and that they are incapable of integrating into the surrounding population. Alongside Herzl's words appear quotations attributed to the historian and journalist Bernard Lazare,