{{short description|French jurist, civil servant and Jewish official (1873-1943)}} {{Infobox person | name = Jacques Helbronner | image = JacquesHelbronner2.jpg | caption = | birth_name = Jacques, Edouard Helbronner | birth_date = 21 September 1873 | birth_place = Paris, France | death_date = {{death-date and age|23 November 1943|21 September 1873}} | death_place = Auschwitz-Birkenau, German-occupied Poland | death_cause = gas chamber | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates = | nationality = | other_names = | known_for = | education = | alma mater = | employer = | occupation = Jurist, civil servant | title = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | boards = | spouse = | children = | parents = Horace Helbronner<br/>Hermance Saint-Paul | relatives = }} '''Jacques Helbronner''' (1873-1943) was a French jurist, civil servant and Jewish official. He served as the president of the Israelite Central Consistory of France from 1940 to 1943. He was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was murdered in a gas chamber by the Nazis.
==Early life== Jacques Helbronner was born on 21 September 1873 in Paris, France.<ref name="legifrance">{{cite web|title=Helbronner, Jacques, Edouard|url=http://www.culture.gouv.fr/LH/LH087/PG/FRDAFAN83_OL1278057v001.htm|website=Legifrance|accessdate=June 22, 2016}}</ref> His father, Horace Helbronner, was a lawyer.<ref name="legifrance"/> His mother, Hermance Saint-Paul, was a housewife.<ref name="legifrance"/>
Helbronner graduated from Sciences Po.<ref name="legifrance"/> He received a Doctorate in Law.<ref name="legifrance"/> He did his military service from 1894 to 1895.<ref name="legifrance"/>
==Career== Helbronner was a lawyer at the Court of Appeal of Paris from 1895 to 1898.<ref name="legifrance"/> He subsequently worked as a civil servant for the Conseil d'État.<ref name="legifrance"/> He became a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1925.<ref name="legifrance"/>
Helbronner served as the president of the Israelite Central Consistory of France from 1940 to 1943.<ref name="leducationjuiveamarseillesousvichy">{{cite journal|last1=Dray-Bensousan|first1=Dray-Bensousan|title=L'éducation juive à Marseille sous Vichy (1940-1943) : une renaissance circonstancielle|journal=Archives Juives|date=2002|volume=2|issue=35|pages=46–59|doi=10.3917/aj.352.0046|url=http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=AJ_352_0046&DocId=17084&hits=4244+4243+538+537+|accessdate=June 22, 2016|via=Cairn.info|url-access=registration }}</ref> He was a supporter of Marshal Philippe Pétain, who told him he had been pressured by the German invaders into passing antisemitic laws.<ref name="jewsinfrance77">{{cite book|last1=Poznanski|first1=Renée|title=Jews in France During World War II|url=https://archive.org/details/jewsinfranceduri00pozn|url-access=limited|date=2001|publisher=University Press of New England|location=Hanover, New Hampshire|isbn=9780874518962|page=[https://archive.org/details/jewsinfranceduri00pozn/page/77 77]}}</ref> Similarly, Xavier Vallat told Helbronner he would change those laws and spare 95 percent of French Jews.<ref name="thejewsofparis84">{{cite book|last1=Adler|first1=Jacques|title=The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940-1944|date=1987|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|isbn=9780195043051|oclc=15016501|page=[https://archive.org/details/jewsofparisthe00adle/page/84 84]|url=https://archive.org/details/jewsofparisthe00adle|url-access=registration|quote=Jacques Helbronner.}}</ref> Historian Jacques Adler has argued Helbronner was misled by the Vichy government.<ref name="thejewsofparis84"/> Meanwhile, in 1941, Helbronner accepted a leadership position in the Union générale des israélites de France (UGIF, General Organization of Jews in France), even though he was initially opposed to its establishment.<ref name="jewishresistance">{{cite book|editor1-last=Henry |editor1-first=Patrick|title=Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis|date=2014|publisher=The Catholic University of America Press|location=Washington, D.C.|isbn=9780813225890|oclc=861497294|page=88|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hYf5AwAAQBAJ&q=Jacques+Helbronner&pg=PA88}}</ref>
==Death== Helbronner was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943,<ref name="verdictonvichy">{{cite book|last1=Curtis|first1=Michael|title=Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime|date=2002|publisher=Arcade Publishing|location=New York|isbn=9781559706896|oclc=51389154|page=24|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LPV14lGhF8gC&q=Jacques+Helbronner+auschwitz&pg=PA24}}</ref> where he was murdered in a gas chamber by the Nazis.<ref name="ahistoryivan">{{cite book|last1=Jablonka|first1=Ivan|title=A History of the Grandparents I Never Had|date=2016|publisher=Stanford University Press|location=Stanford, California|isbn=9780804795449|oclc=926623513|page=112|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zbwCDAAAQBAJ&q=Jacques+Helbronner&pg=PA112}}</ref>
==See also== * Union générale des israélites de France
==References== {{Reflist}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Helbronner, Jacques}} Category:1873 births Category:1943 deaths Category:Lawyers from Paris Category:19th-century French Jews Category:Sciences Po alumni Category:Commanders of the Legion of Honour Category:French people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp Category:French Jews who died in the Holocaust {{France-bio-stub}}