During the Holocaust, approximately six million Jews were killed. In France, the Jewish population had decreased by ******* individuals between 1939 and 1945. It then increased between the end of World War II and the 1970s, reaching ******* individuals in 1970. However, according to the source, the number of Jews in France has declined by more than 15 percent between that period and 2020, and is now estimated to be *******.

The graph shows the distribution of the Jewish population or from Jewish culture in France in 2015, according to their origins. It appears that ** percent of the French Jews or from Jewish culture had Sephardic origins, whereas ** percent of them were from Ashkenazic ancestry. ** percent of Jewish persons in France had both origins.

Jewish origins

The majority of Jewish persons in France have Sephardic origins. The word Sephardic comes from Hebrew Sepharad which means "the Jews of Spain". This population was originally from the Iberian peninsula but began to emigrate in the rest of Europe, and North Africa, at the beginning of the **** century due to the Alhambra Decree by Spain's Catholic monarchy. Those expellees from Spain and Portugal arrived in France from 1492 onwards and settled in majority around the Gascony and Bordeaux. During the **** century and the decolonization process numbers of Jews from North Africa moved to France which had a strong impact on the origins of the French Jewish population.

Ashkenazic Jews are from the Jewish diaspora population who congregated in the Holy Roman Empire. Yiddish is known as their traditional language and most of them settled in Western Germany and Northern France during Charlemagne's reign. Because of various persecutions they emigrated to Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia, Austria and Prussia) throughout the Middle Ages. Eastern Europe will remain the center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust. The majority of victims of the Holocaust had Ashkenazic origins.

This statistic represents the distribution of people of Jewish religion or Jewish origin living in France in 2015, by age group. Thus, more than half of the practicing Jews in France were under 35 years of age.

Throughout history, the displacement and migration of Jewish populations has been a repeating theme. In ancient times, the worlds Jewish population was concentrated in the Middle East, especially around Judaism's spiritual homeland in present-day Israel. However, the population distribution of the world's Jewry began to shift in the Middle Ages, with an increasing share living in Europe. Initially, Western Europe (particularly France, Italy, and Spain) had the largest Jewish populations, before they then migrated eastward in later centuries. Between the 18th and mid-20th centuries, over half of the worl'd Jews lived in Europe, with over 80 percent of these living in Eastern Europe.

Poland had become a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in the Middle Ages, although shifting borders and foreign influence meant that long-term security was never fully attained, and a series of pogroms in the Russian Empire in the 1800s, and rising anti-Semitism in Central Europe in the early-1900s contributred to waves of migration to the United States and Israel during this time. After the Holocaust saw the genocide of up to six million Jews (over one third of the world's Jewish population), the share of Jews living in Europe dropped drastically, and emmigration outside of Europe increased. Today, the United States has the world's largest Jewish population in the world at around 7.3 million people, just ahead of Israel with 7.1 million.

The two countries with the greatest shares of the world's Jewish population are the United States and Israel. The United States had been a hub of Jewish immigration since the nineteenth century, as Jewish people sought to escape persecution in Europe by emigrating across the Atlantic. The Jewish population in the U.S. is largely congregated in major urban areas, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, with the New York metropolitan area being the city with the second largest Jewish population worldwide, after Tel Aviv, Israel. Israel is the world's only officially Jewish state, having been founded in 1948 following the first Arab-Israeli War. While Jews had been emigrating to the holy lands since the nineteenth century, when they were controlled by the Ottoman Empire, immigration increased rapidly following the establishment of the state of Israel. Jewish communities in Eastern Europe who had survived the Holocaust saw Israel as a haven from persecution, while the state encouraged immigration from Jewish communities in other regions, notably the Middle East & North Africa. Smaller Jewish communities remain in Europe in countries such as France, the UK, and Germany, and in other countries which were hotspots for Jewish migration in the twentieth century, such as Canada and Argentina.

The world's Jewish population has had a complex and tumultuous history over the past millennia, regularly dealing with persecution, pogroms, and even genocide. The legacy of expulsion and persecution of Jews, including bans on land ownership, meant that Jewish communities disproportionately lived in urban areas, working as artisans or traders, and often lived in their own settlements separate to the rest of the urban population. This separation contributed to the impression that events such as pandemics, famines, or economic shocks did not affect Jews as much as other populations, and such factors came to form the basis of the mistrust and stereotypes of wealth (characterized as greed) that have made up anti-Semitic rhetoric for centuries. Development since the Middle Ages The concentration of Jewish populations across the world has shifted across different centuries. In the Middle Ages, the largest Jewish populations were found in Palestine and the wider Levant region, with other sizeable populations in present-day France, Italy, and Spain. Later, however, the Jewish disapora became increasingly concentrated in Eastern Europe after waves of pogroms in the west saw Jewish communities move eastward. Poland in particular was often considered a refuge for Jews from the late-Middle Ages until the 18th century, when it was then partitioned between Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and persecution increased. Push factors such as major pogroms in the Russian Empire in the 19th century and growing oppression in the west during the interwar period then saw many Jews migrate to the United States in search of opportunity.

The Freikorps Grün Loudon started as a German mercenary formation raised in spring 1790 to provide the Habsburg army with a light infantry force against the short-lived Brabant Republic. The Freikorps continued to serve during the First Coalition War against Revolutionary France (1792-97). As the conflict dragged on, the Rhineland, which served as its primary recruitment area was occupied by the enemy. As a result, the Freikorps shifted its main recruitment efforts to the Habsburg province of Galicia where a large Jewish population lived. The first Jews volunteers were enlisted in spring 1796. Within a year, Jewish soldiers comprised more than one per cent of the unit's strength. This proportion was kept until the Freikorps was disbanded in summer 1798.

With a total number of 27 individual entries, this dataset covers every single Jewish soldier who served in the unit. In addition to basic bibliographical information, the dataset includes reconstructions of complete service itineraries. Some of these are so detailed that the whereabouts and doings of individual soldiers could be traced month after months. After Freikorps Grün Loudon was disbanded, 22 surviving Jewish veterans were transferred to the 3rd and 4th Light Infantry Battalions. Their subsequent service and eventual fates are covered as well. In the dataset includes partial information about three spouses and two children, whose their existence can be discerned from soldiers' personal records.

In terms of their service experiences, the Jewish members of the Freikorps Grün Loudon did not differ much from other mercenary soldiers of that period. As implied by their name, Freikorps units did not form part of the standing army. Manned by foreign renegades and local volunteers, their soldiers were considered more expandable, and Freikorps used to suffer high combat losses. Tactically, Freikorps were often divided into small raiding detachments, which meant their soldiers often remained outside of the direct supervision of their officers. This resulted in high desertion rates. At the same time, the Freikorps also had a committed core of highly-dedicated professional soldiers. Among the veterans of the Freikorps Grün Loudon was Samuel Prager – one of the first documented Jewish soldiers in modern history to rise to the rank of Company Sergeant Major.

For more information on the Freikorps Grün Loudon, see:

Alfons von Wrede, Geschichte der k. und k. Wehrmacht, 5 Vols., (Vienna: Seidel, 1898–1905), Vol. 2, pp. 445-6.

For more information how to identify Jewish soldiers in Habsburg military records, see:

Ilya Berkovich, 'Nachweis von Konfession und Religion in habsburgischen Militärmatriken', Die Habsburgermonarchie: Fragen, Quellen und Ergebnisee zur Geschichte der Neuzeit (Blog), (10 January 2020).

The Holocaust was the systematic extermination of Europe's Jewish population in the Second World War, during which time, up to six million Jews were murdered as part of Nazi Germany's "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". In the context of the Second World War, the term "Holocaust" is traditionally used to reference the genocide of Europe's Jews, although this coincided with the Nazi regime's genocide and ethnic cleansing of an additional eleven million people deemed "undesirable" due to their ethnicity, beliefs, disability or sexuality (among others). During the Holocaust, Poland's Jewish population suffered the largest number of fatalities, with approximately three million deaths. Additionally, at least one million Jews were murdered in the Soviet Union, while Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia also lost the majority of their respective pre-war Jewish populations. The Holocaust in Poland In the interwar period, Europe's Jewish population was concentrated in the east, with roughly one third living in Poland; this can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when thousands of Jews flocked to Eastern Europe to escape persecution. At the outbreak of the Second World War, it is estimated that there were 3.4 million Jews living in Poland, which was approximately ten percent of the total population. Following the German invasion of Poland, Nazi authorities then segregated Jews in ghettos across most large towns and cities, and expanded their network of concentration camps throughout the country. In the ghettos, civilians were deprived of food, and hundreds of thousands died due to disease and starvation; while prison labor was implemented under extreme conditions in concentration camps to fuel the German war effort. In Poland, six extermination camps were also operational between December 1941 and January 1945, which saw the mass extermination of approximately 2.7 million people over the next three years (including many non-Poles, imported from other regions of Europe). While concentration camps housed prisoners of all backgrounds, extermination camps were purpose-built for the elimination of the Jewish race, and over 90% of their victims were Jewish. The majority of the victims in these extermination camps were executed by poison gas, although disease, starvation and overworking were also common causes of death. In addition to the camps and ghettos, SS death squads (Einsatzgruppen) and local collaborators also committed widespread atrocities across Eastern Europe. While the majority of these atrocities took place in the Balkan, Baltic and Soviet regions, they were still prevalent in Poland (particularly during the liquidation of the ghettos), and the Einsatzgruppen alone are estimated to have killed up to 1.3 million Jews throughout the Holocaust. By early 1945, Soviet forces had largely expelled the German armies from Poland and liberated the concentration and extermination camps; by this time, Poland had lost roughly ninety percent of its pre-war Jewish population, and suffered approximately three million further civilian and military deaths. By 1991, Poland's Jewish population was estimated to be just 15 thousand people, while there were fewer than two thousand Jews recorded as living in Poland in 2018.

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of Ccf New York Jewish French Community Center of Ny Inc.

Kosher Restaurant Market Outlook

According to our latest research, the global kosher restaurant market size reached USD 19.7 billion in 2024, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.3% during the forecast period, reaching USD 33.9 billion by 2033. This robust growth is primarily driven by the increasing demand for kosher-certified food, rising awareness about food safety and hygiene, and the expanding global Jewish population. The market is also witnessing growing interest from non-Jewish consumers who perceive kosher food as healthier and more stringently regulated, further fueling market expansion.

One of the primary growth factors for the kosher restaurant market is the rising consumer awareness regarding food quality, safety, and dietary requirements. The kosher certification process is known for its strict adherence to food preparation and handling guidelines, which appeals not only to Jewish consumers but also to a broader demographic seeking transparency and assurance in their food choices. This trend is particularly evident among health-conscious individuals and those with specific dietary needs such as lactose intolerance or allergies, as kosher standards often provide an added layer of scrutiny. The increasing number of foodborne illness outbreaks globally has also led consumers to seek out establishments with recognized certifications, further boosting the popularity of kosher restaurants.

Another significant driver is the globalization and diversification of cuisines offered by kosher restaurants. Traditionally, kosher dining was associated primarily with Eastern European and Middle Eastern fare; however, the modern kosher restaurant landscape now includes a wide array of international cuisines, from Mediterranean to American and beyond. This diversification not only attracts a broader customer base but also encourages repeat visits from existing clientele seeking variety. The rise of food delivery platforms and digital ordering has further enabled kosher restaurants to reach new customers and markets, reducing geographical barriers and increasing accessibility for those seeking kosher options.

The evolution of dining formats within the kosher restaurant market is also propelling growth. The emergence of fine dining kosher establishments, quick service restaurants, cafés, and bakeries has expanded the market’s appeal to various consumer segments, including families, individuals, and corporate clients. This segmentation allows kosher restaurants to cater to different dining occasions, from casual meals to high-end celebrations and corporate events. Additionally, the growing prevalence of kosher catering services for weddings, conferences, and community events is creating new revenue streams and solidifying the market’s position in the global foodservice industry.

In recent years, the market for Kosher Ready Meals has seen a notable uptick, driven by the convenience it offers to consumers seeking kosher-certified options without the need for dining out. These meals cater to busy individuals and families who prioritize dietary adherence and quality, yet require the flexibility of having ready-to-eat options at home or on the go. The rise of Kosher Ready Meals is not only a reflection of changing consumer lifestyles but also an indication of the growing demand for diverse kosher offerings that extend beyond traditional restaurant settings. This trend is particularly evident in urban areas where time constraints and fast-paced living create a significant market for convenient meal solutions.

From a regional perspective, North America continues to dominate the kosher restaurant market, accounting for the largest share in 2024, followed by Europe and the Middle East & Africa. The United States, in particular, boasts a well-established kosher dining culture, with cities like New York and Los Angeles leading in the number of kosher-certified establishments. Europe is witnessing steady growth, especially in countries with significant Jewish populations such as France and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, the Asia Pacific region is emerging as a promising market, driven by increasing tourism and the proliferation of international cuisine. The Middle East remains a key region due to its cultural and religious ties to kosher dietary laws, with countries like Israel at the forefront of innovation in kosher dining ex

This graphic shows the forecasted number of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, religiously unaffiliated people, believers in folk religions and in other religions in France in 2022. With almost ** million people identifying themselves as Christians, Christianity was the most represented religion in France. Furthermore, about **** million people considered themselves religiously unaffiliated.

This statistic displays the breakdown the population of Jewish faith or of Jewish origin living in France in 2015 ,by level of religious observance. Thus, more than ** percent of French Jews were not observant of their religion at all.

In 1995, Israel had a Jewish population of approximately 4.5 million people, of whom approximately 1.75 million were born abroad. Over one million of these immigrants were born in Europe, with over 650,000 of these born in the former Soviet Union. Despite Poland having the largest Jewish population in the world in the pre-WWII years, the number of Polish Jewish migrants and descendents in Israel was relatively small in 1995 when compared to the USSR due to the impact of the Holocaust.

Outside of Europe, Morocco had the largest number of Jewish immigrants and descendents in Israel by 1995. Morocco had the largest Jewish population in the Muslim world when Israel was founded in 1948, with over 250,000 people. Many Moroccan Jews sought to emigrate to Israel at this time, but often faced resistance from authorities and local populations who believed the Jews would join in the fight against the Arab forces seeking to establish a Muslim state in Palestine. The government of Morocco then officially prohibited emigration to Israel after gaining independence from France in 1956, however this policy was reversed in 1961 whereby the Moroccan government began facilitating Jewish emigration to Israel in return for payments from Jewish organizations in the U.S. and Israel. By the 1970s, Morocco's Jewish population had fallen to less than 15 percent of its size in 1948.

With the heightened threat to Germany's Jewish population following the Nazi Party's ascent to power in 1933, many German Jews chose to flee or emigrate. In 1933, Germany's Jewish population was approximately 500,000 people; by the end of the war, it is estimated that 300,000 fled the country, and 165,000 were murdered in the Holocaust. In order to flee, most Jewish emigrants from Germany had to give up the majority of their wealth to the German state, whose emigration tax and seizure of property stripped Jews of their financial assets. Destination and transit For Germany's Jewish refugees, the most common destination country was the United States, and almost half of all these refugees would arrive in the U.S. over this 12 year period. As the United States had a strict quota of 27,000 German migrants per year, many refugees were forced to enter via other countries. France was the second most common destination country, receiving 100,000 refugees. However, France was also used as a transit country for German Jews wishing to travel further afield, especially after it was annexed by Germany in 1940. This was also true for several other European countries, such as the Netherlands, which had provided protection for German Jews in the mid-1930s, before rapidly becoming very unsafe following the outbreak of war in 1939. The Frank family Possibly the most famous example of this was the story of Anne Frank and her family. Anne had been born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929, but her family moved to the Netherlands in 1934 after Hitler came to power. The family then led a relatively comfortable and successful life in Amsterdam, with her father, Otto, founding his own businesses. When the Netherlands was invaded by the Germans in 1940, the family tried to emigrate once more; Otto had been granted a single Cuban visa in 1942, but the family was forced to go into hiding as the restrictions tightened. For the next two years, with the help of non-Jewish friends, they lived in secret in the upper floor of Otto's business premises with several other Jewish refugees, in a small space concealed behind a bookcase. In August 1944, through unknown means, the group was betrayed and then arrested by Dutch authorities, and the Frank family was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau thereafter. Anne's mother, Edith, died of starvation in Auschwitz within five months of her capture, while Anne and her sister, Margot, died one month later after being transferred to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany. Otto was the sole survivor of the group. Otto's secretary, Miep Gies, had saved Anne's diary the day after the group was arrested, which she then gave to Otto; he then devoted much of the remainder of his life to the publication and promotion of his daughter's diary, which has now become one of the most famous and widely-read books in recent history. Additionally, the hiding space is now open to the public, and has become one of the Netherlands' most popular tourist museums.

As early as 1319, allegations of well-poisoning had been levelled at leper communities in Europe, in an attempt to demonize and ostracize this group in society. In France and Spain in 1321, the "leper's plot" developed into a widespread conspiracy, claiming that leper communities were acting on the orders of the Jews or Spanish Moors, poisoning water supplies in an attempt to spread disease among Christians. Under royal decrees, many lepers were then tortured into confessing to these acts, and were subsequently burnt at the stake (although this was often carried out by vigilante mobs before it could be done by the courts). After the initial hysteria in 1321, the involvement of lepers was quickly dismissed, and a papal bull was introduced to grant protection to leper communities in France; this however did not dispel the myths surrounding the Jews' involvement in the conspiracy, and the issue emerged again a few decades later. Why the Jews were blamed When the bubonic plague made its way to Europe, many were eager to find a scapegoat on whom they could blame their misfortune. The "well-poisoning" accusations were quickly raised again against Jewish communities in France and Spain, and also across the German states. Historians point to several reasons why Jews were blamed for the Black Death; many Jews lived in separate communities and did not use the same common wells, and Jewish religious practices promote bathing and hand-washing; both of these factors meant that the plague spread differently and at a different rate among Jews than it did among the general population. Modern historians also point to the fact that Jews were often moneylenders, and their debtors often used the plague as an opportunity to expunge their debts; Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV also forfeited the property of Jews who were killed in the pogroms, giving further impetus to these mobs. Anti-Jewish pogroms The first reported pogroms took place in Toulon in 1348, before the violence then spread across the rest of Western Europe. Over the next three years, hundreds of Jewish communities were attacked and exterminated, with the majority taking place in the German states. A number of larger communities, such as those in Cologne and Mainz, were destroyed completely, resulting in the deaths and forced conversions of thousands of Jews. Pope Clement VI introduced two papal bulls in 1348, which granted the church's protection to Europe's Jews. He also urged the clergy and nobility to take measures that protected Jews in their local areas, although most sources show that authorities were apathetic or complicit in the actions of the mobs. There is even evidence that authorities orchestrated several of the pogroms, such as in Strasbourg, where authorities led the city's Jewish community to a newly-built house outside the city, but when they arrived, any Jews who refused to convert to Christianity were then burned alive inside the house. Legacy Many of the sources present different versions of events, with death tolls ranging from one hundred to several thousand in some cases, while some sources also claim that Jews set fire to their own homes rather than convert. It is now impossible to confirm the exact sequence of events, or the actual number of deaths resulting from these pogroms, however, the limited sources available do provide a brief foundation for the modern understanding of medieval anti-Semitism and the destruction inflicted upon the Jews during the plague. It is also important to note that these pogroms were not unique to the Black Death's outbreak, and there is evidence of numerous massacres of Jewish communities in the centuries that followed. The demographic impact of the massacres was that there was a mass exodus of Jews from west to Eastern Europe, to countries such as Poland (where they were actually welcomed by authorities). The consequences of this demographic shift would be most felt six centuries later, when millions of Jews across Eastern Europe were exterminated at the hands of the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.

In 2021, more than *****of the anti-religious acts identified by the Ministry of the Interior concerned the Christian community. According to the source, these were mainly attacks on religious property. The second most affected community was the Jewish community in France (*****percent of anti-religious acts).

This statistic displays public perceptions and awareness of holocaust denial, in the European Union in 2018. As findings show, the majority of the respondents thought that denying the genocide of the Jewish people is a problem in their country, with Sweden and France having the highest share, at 79 percent and 78 percent of respondents respectively.