Kosher and Jewish Life in Boulogne-Billancourt

In the 1880s, a period of peace and prosperity in France after the wounds inflicted by the Franco-Prussian War, synagogues began to appear in the affluent western suburbs of Neuilly and Versailles. The Jewish community of neighboring Boulogne, consisting of twenty or thirty families, soon outgrew the rented space used for prayer and began to make plans for the construction of its own synagogue. The generosity of the Baron Edmond and Baroness Adelaide de Rothschild made this dream a reality. The Rothschilds donated a part of their large estate, enlisted the renowned architect Emmanuel-Elisée Pontremoli, and provided continued support for the project. Byzantine in style, imbued with a simple elegance, Boulogne's synagogue was inaugurated in 1911. But the Second World War and the Nazi occupation decimated Boulogne's Jewish population. The town had its share of deportations and humiliations. Of a hundred Jewish families, barely fifteen survived. For a few years during the war, Pontremoli's elegant synagogue was used by the Nazis as a stable. With the independence of Algeria in 1962, France saw massive waves of immigration from its former colonies in North Africa. The influx of Sephardic Jews enlarged and rejuvinated the Boulogne community. Customs and worship changed as what had been a largely Ashkenazi congregation integrated the Sephardic newcomers. By the 1990s, the community numbered about a thousand families. Since that time many families have been leaving Paris and heading for Israel or London.