While working in the archives of the Alpes-Maritimes in Nice, France, sorting Holocaust-era documents related to a 20th century politician in Vichy France, American historian Robert Levitt ran across a letter that gripped his attention like no other. It was a letter from a man about to be deported by the Gestapo because they were convinced he was Jewish, when in actuality he was not. In this personal essay Levitt writes how this letter changed the way he thought about Nice and led to his continuing study of the long and tumultuous history of Jews in the city, from medieval times to the present.
Exploring Jewish Nice and Its Many Layers of History
by Robert Levitt
The Jewish heritage in Nice is not about places that “used to be” something else. The city’s Jewish heritage remains in full view, although it takes some interpretation to see and understand it.
You can trace Jewish history from medieval times to the present. You can explore the old ghetto, visit synagogues and the Jewish cemetery, experience the life of a contemporary Jewish community – and even visit a museum dedicated to the works of the great Jewish painter Marc Chagall, who spent the last decades of his life nearby.
But you can also recall the sound of the heavy boots of Gestapo soldiers racing up stairs during World War II.
Indeed, the letter in the archive that drew me into the study of Jewish Nice was one of palpitating fear. I could almost feel the sweat dripping with each word. Because of the war, the writer could not obtain his original documents, and now he had nowhere to turn. Here was a non-Jew speaking of the terror of the unknown, his first realization of what Jews had been feeling for several years or perhaps even centuries.
It was a letter that made me realize that I had moved to one of the most important cities for Jews in World War II, and also a city with a long Jewish history.
As a medieval historian and reader of Latin, and with a great deal of archival experience, I began both to discover and to explore this history – and eventually I founded a history company that focuses on research but also offers specialized Jewish heritage tours.
Jewish history in Nice goes back many centuries. The city became part of France only in 1860. Since 1388, it had been part of the County of Savoy, ruled by a Duke in Torino.
In 1430, the Duke of Savoy imposed a ghetto — “Juiverie,” and Jews were mandated to wear a yellow badge on their clothing. But the authorities in Nice apparently didn’t listen, because 18 years later, a follow-up letter was sent to those authorities castigating them for their failure to separate the Jews in the city. And, while in Torino the government was provoking the Jews, in that same year, 1448, the city of Nice gave its banking franchise to a Jewish banker named Bonnefoy de Chalons. Reading the Latin contract, I could see that Bonnefoy had full rights to live wherever he pleased, which made no sense if a Jewish ghetto had been imposed by the city the same year.
Whether a ghetto was ever actually imposed in Nice during the medieval period remains an outstanding question in my mind. We know, however, that in 1733, the ghetto in Nice did become a reality. Permission was given that year to designate a synagogue on the third floor of a building owned by the Catholic brotherhood Pénitents Noirs, and there was a mikveh in the basement. (Sold to help finance the construction of the new Temple Israelite, or Great Synagogue, built in 1885-86, the building today bears no indication that it once housed a synagogue.)
The former ghetto is located in what is today rue Benoit Bunico in Nice’s Old Town. The buildings on at least one side of the street had underground tunnels to the adjacent street, rue Droit, which would allow the Jews to come and go when they chose. In 1750, the obligation for Jews to wear a badge was formally abolished, and all other legal restrictions on Jews were finally ended in 1848.
The Jewish cemetery on Colline du Chateau overlooking the city opened in 1783 and contains burials transferred from an earlier Jewish cemetery believed to have been founded centuries earlier. (Some sources state the oldest tombstone in the cemetery dates to 1540, but so far the oldest I have found dates from 1762.)
The gravestones tell the history of Jewish families that made their way to Nice from near and far. They bear epitaphs written in French, Hebrew, Polish, Italian, Russian, English, and German – and the name of the city (named after the Greek goddess of victory, Nike) is spelled in a corresponding variety of ways – Nice, Nizza, Niza, Nica, Nissa, Ніцца, Ηίκαια, Nicea, Nicaea, Nisa, Ницца…. The people interred here were born in Kiev, Vasylkiv, Warsaw, Kishinev, Mariupol, Kherson, Odessa, Nikolaev, Kaunas, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Lwów, Radautz of Bukovina (Rădăuți, Romania), Algeria, Oran, Constantine, Taganrog, Constantinople, London, Rangoon, Cairo, and Johannesburg…..
As I have dug deeper into the history of individuals interred there, I found Jews whose ancestors were chased in the Medieval period from England, Spain, Portugal, North Africa, the Middle East and many other places. Indeed, by researching those buried in the cemetery, one can almost piece together the pattern of movement of Jewish communities throughout Europe, and it is this research will I actively pursue.
Extraordinary Jewish stories took place during World War II. Nice was initially part of the Nazi-allied unoccupied part of France, known as Vichy France. The Germans ordered roundups of Jews to begin in August 1942, but a month later, Nice fell under the jurisdiction of the Italians, who refused to hand over Jews to the Germans. At one point, as many as 100,000 Jews crowded the city, seeking refuge.
But the Germans took over the Italian zone in September 1943 and occupied the city until August 1944. They brought in the infamous Jew hater S.S. Alois Brunner as Obersturmbannführer – he took over the belle époque Hotel Excelsior as his headquarters, and the hotel also served as a Nazi prison.
The thousands of recently arrived Jews in the city became easy targets, but Nice reacted, working through resistance groups to hide Jews, especially Jewish children.
The ghetto-era tunnels in the city’s Old Town may well have housed Jews during WW2. In a private cellar, I discovered a Star of David and a Menorah, as well as communist symbols, and one symbol still unknown, engraved into the walls.
Still, thousands were deported from Nice and surrounding areas, most of them to the French concentration camp of Drancy and then Auschwitz.
In 1951, a memorial was erected in the Jewish cemetery in remembrance of both the resistance heroes and the martyrs, but the traumatic wartime experiences remained largely hidden history over the following decades.
Only relatively recently has the city become open again to examining what occurred. A monument to the Justes (Righteous among Nations) was erected in 2014, and a new memorial was slated to be unveiled in January 2020 commemorating the more than 3,800 people from from the region who were deported to their deaths.
Nearly 75 years after the end of World War II, these memorials add to the many layers of Jewish history in Nice — and finally recognize a layer that must no longer be ignored.
– – – – –
January 14, 2020
– – – – –
Robert Levitt, based in Nice, is the founder of Via Nissa (www.vianissa.com), a history company focused on archival and historical research and selected curated visits on the Côte d’Azur. He is currently a candidate for a doctoral degree in medieval history from the Université de Lyon. He can be reached at [email protected] or +33 6 59 87 96 69.