L'Affaire Finaly
Deux enfants au coeur d'une affaire d'Etat
David Korn-Brzoza
2007 - 62 min - DV Cam - Couleur et Noir & Blanc - France

June 26, 1953, 4 pm. A car hired by the French government crosses the Franco-Spanish border without stopping at the customs checkpoint.
In the rear seat are two children: Gérald & Robert Finaly. Their fate has divided public opinion, the press, and the political, intellectual and judicial world. It had brought into conflict Jews and Catholics, clergy and laymen, compromised the Church of France, worried the Vatican. It all began in 1944, when the parents of Gerald and Robert, about to be deported to Auschwitz, entrusted their children to Antoinette Brun, a nursery school director. After the war, she had the two boys baptized and refused to return them to their surviving relatives. What was at first a mere incident grew into an affair over the years, then an affair of state. Ten years after its resolution, the Second Vatican Council established a new dialogue between Jews and Christians. “The Finaly affair” undoubtedly played a role in this evolution.