This has "never been shown".

"This is the first time that we have attempted this difficult intellectual adventure, that of the history of relations between Jews and Muslims", which has "a very long life", says historian Benjamin Stora, curator general.

With the subtitle "more history, less clichés", this exhibition, which opens on Tuesday and is held until July 17 at the Museum of the history of immigration, "focuses not simply on the confrontations (...) but on the possibilities of transmitting a common memory, without naivety", he underlines.

With the objective of "trying to build and maintain bridges".

This project, moreover, "extends" the exhibition "Jews of the East, a multi-millennial history" which has just ended at the Arab World Institute (IMA), with "a complementary dimension" linked to "the history political, cultural, social of France", adds Mathias Dreyfuss, historian, executive curator.

Offering photo prints, posters, video archives from the National Audiovisual Institute (INA), film extracts, a few paintings, the tour takes the visitor through three major periods.

First, from 1830 to 1914, with the arrival of France in Algeria (1830), then in Tunisia (1881) and Morocco (1912).

Then the period between the two wars, the Vichy regime, the war in Algeria and decolonization in Morocco and Tunisia.

And finally, from 1967 to the present day, but this time on the territory of metropolitan France, with the installation of large Jewish and Muslim communities which are today, in number, the two largest in Europe.

The visitor encounters evidence of "separation" or "clashes", in the words of Mr. Stora: thus the Crémieux decree issued by the French State in 1870 - an official copy is on display - which collectively grants French citizenship to 35,000 Jews in Algeria, but not to the 3 million Muslims.

The latter remain with the status of "indigenous" with limited civil and legal rights, causing them a feeling of injustice.

Newspaper clippings about the 1934 Constantine anti-Jewish riot at the "Jews and Muslims from Colonial France to the Present" exhibition, at the Museum of the History of Immigration, in Paris, on March 31, 2022 Emmanuel DUNAND AFP/Archives

This will have repercussions until 1962, with independence: the Jews who arrived in France will be repatriated since they are French citizens, while the Muslim migrants become immigrants.

national loans

Another "great trauma", according to Mr. Stora: the riots in Constantine in 1934, which resulted in 28 deaths (25 Jews, 3 Muslims).

We also see how much, from 1967 and the Six-Day War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became "what crystallizes relations between Jews and Muslims in France", explains Mr. Dreyfuss, and this until today.

But the exhibition also shows the interactions between Jews and Muslims on the music scene and in the field of painting at certain times (mainly between the wars), or even the (minority) support of Jewish families involved in the Algerian side during the war of independence.

It immerses the visitor in the oriental atmosphere of the Belleville district in Paris in the 1970s, which inspired film directors.

She asks him about anti-Muslim racism and contemporary anti-Semitism since the second Intifada.

And leaves it with these portraits of adolescents - Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists - from the same college in Sarcelles (Val d'Oise), produced in 2021 by videographer Valérie Mréjen.

Loans of works and objects come mainly from national institutions (national archives, loans from the Quai Branly museum, the Museum of Jewish Art and History, Center Pompidou, Museum of Immigration, images from INA ).

Unlike "Eastern Jews", which had benefited from loans from Israeli institutions, causing controversy.

© 2022 AFP