The finaly affair

As the Nazi terror spread across Europe, some hunted Jews sought sanctuary in private homes or in religious institutions . Often only part of a family went underground, young children having the best chance of survival in hiding . Parents sometimes sent their very young children to foster mothers in rural areas. This mode of care, however, was subject to involved child custody battles. Many children were placed in Catholic institutions, where they were obliged to assume new names-new names which sometimes led subtly to new identities . In the worst cases, there was overt proselytism .I One such case came to world attention in February 1953 with the kidnapping, by members of the French Catholic clergy, of Robert and Gerald Finaly, aged eleven and ten, sons of an Austrian Jewish couple deported to Drancy and Auschwitz in February 1944 . Initially, the kidnapping seemed to be strictly a matter for the courts, but soon the unusual implications of the case began to overshadow the crime itself. In a few days the term `affaire'-one not employed indiscriminately in newspaper usage-replaced the word `kidnapping' in the French press, in public debate, and in private conversations . Not since the Dreyfus affair had an issue involving Jews rocked France as did the affaire Finally, described in the New York Times as `the worst religious storm of post-war France .' 2 Old debates which had seemed settled during the war or the post-war period in France-anticlericalism and antisemitism-were rekindled . Public opinion within France and without was divided, much along the same lines as in the Dreyfus days . The Finaly affair was certainly a judicial problem, but even more it was a human, a moral, and a theological problem . In this cause cilebre the French popular press found a journalistic bonanza, and indeed the press has been blamed for the uncompromising positions taken

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