Victor Basch

Who was Victor Basch?

Basch Viktor Vilém, or Victor-Guillaume Basch was a French politician and professor of germanistics and philosophy at the Sorbonne descending from Hungary. He was engaged in the Zionist Movement, in the Ligue des droits de l'homme and in Anti-nazism .

His father was the journalist and political activist, Raphael Basch. Born in Budapest in 1863, Victor Basch emigrated with his family to France as a child, and later studied at the Sorbonne. In 1885 he was appointed professor at the University of Nancy, and in 1887 at the University of Rennes, where he became friend with Jean Jaurès. During the Dreyfus affair Basch was the leader of the Dreyfusards at Rennes, who were placed in a serious and difficult position when the case was tried in that city. Both as a Jew and a Dreyfusard, Basch was subjected to persecution at the hands of the fanatical anti-Semitic populace. In a 1916 interview cited by his biographer and granddaughter, the French historian Françoise Basch, Victor Basch declared, "Je suis vraiment un juif. J'ai lutté et souffert pour ma judéité." However, biographer Françoise Basch underscores that her grandfather identified with his family history and the suffering of persecuted Jews, and not with Judaism as a religion per se. As both a member of the League against Imperialism created in Brussels in 1927, and as President of the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme from 1926–1944, Basch was one of the architects of the Popular Front. He fought and suffered for the principles of legal and social justice as well as human rights.