Like all French citizens, Jews with French nationality who were of the required age were mobilized for what would come to be known as the “Phoney War.” Many Jews immigrants then enlisted in the Marching Regiments of Foreign Volunteers (RMVE) or in other units of foreign volunteers serving France. Adam Rayski and G. Kenig, editors of the Naïe Presse, were among those who enlisted. Kenig was sent to the front in May 1940, during the German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, and then France.
The leaders of the underground Jewish section of the M.O.I., Jacques Kaminski and Edouard Kowalski, who were being investigated by the police and threatened for being communists, left the capital, soon followed by Louis Gronowski, the national leader of the M.O.I. In their absence, Albert Youdine became the Parisian head of the Jewish section.
Before long, the French army was in full retreat.
It was a defeat: hundreds of thousands of soldiers were taken prisoner. In the RMVE, a large number of foreigners—including Jews who were immigrants and who were poorly equipped and ill-prepared—were killed or captured. There was a massive exodus, which began affecting Parisians in early June 1940.
German forces are advancing.
On June 16, Marshal Pétain became President of the Council. On the 17th, he called on the French to cease fighting and requested an armistice from the Germans.
In response, on June 18, 1940, from London, on the British BBC radio network, General de Gaulle rejected the armistice and issued his call to the French Resistance—known as the “June 18 Appeal”—which was broadcast but not recorded. Shortly thereafter, in a speech broadcast and recorded on June 22, 1940, again on the BBC, de Gaulle called on the “Free French” to “continue the fight.” This marked the birth of “Free France ” outside French borders.
