One of the most charming and least known museums in Paris that tells a tragic Jewish story, alongside splendor and grandeur that would put even a French palace to shame.
The Camondo family traces its roots back to the Spanish exile when it moved to Venice and later to Istanbul, where it became a famous banking family. During the 19th century, the family moved to Italy, where the patriarch received a title of nobility for his financial assistance to King Victor Emmanuel II during the Italian War of Independence. The Camondo family's next stop was France and his sons settled in Paris and made a living in the French banking and railway industries. In 1912, Moshe de Camondo established a house of standards adjacent to theMonceau Park , which is a perfect replica of the Petit Trianon in Versailles, in order to house the collection of furniture and works of art from the 18th century.
However, the family idyll did not last long. In 1914, World War I broke out and the son and heir Nissim de Camondo enlisted in the French army as a fighter pilot. In 1917, he was killed and in order to perpetuate his memory, his father decided that after his death the house and its contents would be transferred to the French government, which in return would establish a museum named after his son Nissim. The father died in 1935, but this did not end the family tragedy. Moshe had a daughter named Beatrice, who was one of the most important socialites in Paris. In 1940, after the German occupation, Beatrice refused to leave France, believing that her high status would protect her, but the Germans did not spare her and she and her children were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
Today, the magnificent house serves as both an impressive museum containing quite a few charming pieces of art from the 18th century and as a kind of monument to a Jewish family that gave France what was most precious to them and in return was completely wiped out during the Holocaust.
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It was amazing
The Hebrew translation of the book "The Stairs of Istanbul" by Tiago Salazar, about the life of the Camondo family, has been published.
Merav Golan wrote about this book on her website.