Paris: The House of Camondo

In the 8th arrondissement of Paris there is a beautiful park called Parc Monceau, along the avenue Monceau. Near this elegant park is the Nissim de Camondo museum, which was his residence in Paris. The house where he lived is very close to the Arc de Triomphe and the very famous avenue des Champs-Élysées. This marvellous house was built by Count Moïse de Camondo, and its architecture was inspired by the famous palace of Versailles. After passing through great doors and seeing a large, beautiful courtyard, one enters the hall, where an elegant staircase curves up to the floor above. This staircase reminds us of the curving staircases in the dream of Tevye the milkman, in the play Fiddler on the Roof: he wanted two staircases in his house, one for going up and down and the other of no use at all, just for show.

The dining room (salle à manger) of this museum, which looks onto very elaborate gardens, has classical furniture, paintings of great value and porcelain of the finest kind. Count Moïse de Camondo was the heir to a very important fortune of Jewish bankers. He was able to collect works by famous artists of the 18th century, a table covered in petrified wood that belonged to Queen Marie Antoinette, and luxury decorative articles and silverware that had been part of the wealth of 'Catherine the Great' of Russia. Moïse and his cousin Isaac de Camondo were great admirers of painting and helped many artists of their time, such as Monet, Manet, Cézanne and Degas (even though Degas was a great antisemite). Isaac de Camondo gave his whole collection of paintings to the Louvre museum, and for many years these works stayed in the museum's storerooms. The Camondo brothers were members of the foundation of the Louvre, and most of its meetings were held around the sumptuous table of the dining room, looking out on the avenue Monceau.

In 1891 Moïse de Camondo married Irène Cahen (Cohen) d'Anvers, the daughter of Louis Cahen d'Anvers, one of the richest bankers of Europe, head of the bank today called BNP Paribas. This family had the tradition of saying they descended from the line of King David. Moïse's wife, Irène, was painted by the famous painter Renoir when she was a girl of 8, and this painting is called and known as 'Little Irène'. The Camondo family began with Avram Salamon Camondo, born in 1781 in Istanbul. With time, A. S. Camondo became the great financier of the Ottoman Empire and was called the 'Rothschild of the East'. He became counsellor and confidant of the Grand Vizier and of the Sultans Abdülmecid and Abdülaziz, helped with the expenses of the Crimean War and with the Tanzimat reforms for the consolidation of the state.

The Emperor Franz Joseph invited him to Vienna for his wedding in 1854 and gave him the title of Knight (Chevalier). The Italian king Victor Emmanuel gave him the title of 'Count' after his acts of philanthropy in Italy in 1867. He helped the Jews of the Ottoman Empire a great deal, some hundreds of thousands of them in various cities of the Empire. Across the whole territory of the Empire — the Balkans, Salonika, Syria, Iraq, today's Egypt, which were part of the Empire — Camondo also had many problems with the religious leaders of the Jewish community, because he supported the school of the Alliance, where teaching was in French, and the religious leaders were not happy and feared that this teaching could lead to assimilation. Camondo gave his house in Istanbul to Moses Montefiore, another philanthropist, who came to Istanbul to help resolve the problem of the Jews imprisoned in Syria after the blood libel and had meetings with Sultan Abdülmecid on the matter. The problem was resolved and he stayed in the home of his friend Avram Camondo.

Avram's son died very young, and the grandsons Avram Bohor and Nesim transferred the bank from Istanbul to Paris, to the rue La Fayette, in 1868. They built houses on the rue de Monceau, and inside, a yeshiva holding all the Jewish riches of grandfather Avram, such as Torah scrolls with their silver crowns. Grandfather Avram died at 92 in 1873, and the whole family moved to Paris. The mausoleum where he was buried is in Istanbul. Later the body was taken to Paris. The mausoleum was abandoned and served as a shelter for those who had no house to live in. Years ago it was restored by the Municipality of Istanbul. The two brothers Avram Bohor and Nesim died in 1889. Nesim's son Moïse had married Irène Cahen. In the Second World War, Béatrice, the daughter of Irène and sole heiress of the fortune, although she had converted to Christianity, was killed in Auschwitz by the Nazis. Lives of rich memories, full of history, and examples of courage and great vital energy. Adapted from the article by R.B. Goldschmidt