Adolphe Crémieux
Adolphe Crémieux · Civil Rights & Human Rights
French Minister of Justice who abolished the death penalty for political crimes and, by the Crémieux Decree (1870), gave French citizenship to the Jews of Algeria; president of the Alliance israélite universelle.
30 avril 1796, Nîmes, France — 10 février 1880, Paris, France
Nîmes, Paris
Adolphe Crémieux is recognized among Israeli contributors to Civil Rights & Human Rights — French Minister of Justice who abolished the death penalty for political crimes and, by the Crémieux Decree (1870), gave French citizenship to the Jews of Algeria; president of the Alliance israélite universelle.
Origins and early life
Adolphe Crémieux — born Isaac-Jacob Crémieu on 30 April 1796 in Nîmes, into a Jewish family of the Comtat Venaissin whose line the genealogies document across four generations — became the great emancipator of French Jewry.
Work and career
A brilliant advocate, he twice served as Minister of Justice, in the Revolution of 1848 and again in the Government of National Defense of 1870. In 1848 he helped abolish the death penalty for political offenses and slavery in the colonies. In 1840 he journeyed to the East with Moses Montefiore to plead for the Jews of Damascus, imprisoned under a blood libel, and obtained their release. As president of the Alliance israélite universelle from 1863, he made the defense of persecuted Jews — from Damascus to the Danube — a matter of international diplomacy.
His name endures above all in the Crémieux Decree of 24 October 1870, which granted French citizenship to the Jews of Algeria. Elected a senator for life in 1875, he died in Paris on 10 February 1880 and was buried at the Montparnasse cemetery.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library ; Wikipédia
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French Minister of Justice who abolished the death penalty for political crimes and, by the Crémieux Decree (1870), gave French citizenship to the Jews of Algeria; president of the Alliance israélite universelle.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library ; Wikipédia
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