L’Arche, Dictionary of French Judaism, “Ashkenaz”

Arnold Mandel was born in Strasbourg to a Galician family with Hasidic roots. As a journalist, literary critic, and author, Mandel examined the tensions between increasingly assimilated French Jews and the traditional life of East European Jewish immigrants. After being detained twice by the Vichy government, Mandel joined the French Resistance. In the 1950s, Mandel became a major Yiddish literary specialist in France, translating the works of Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh (Mendele Moykher-Sforim). Mandel was also a friend of the existentialists Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.