France: New president 's Sephardic ties

An excellent source for European Jewish information is the European Jewish Press

Here we learn that Sarkozy's mother is a member of one of the oldest Jewish families of Salonika, the MALLAH (Hebrew: messenger or angel) family. The family escaped the Spanish Inquisition, settled in Provence, France and moved a century later to Salonika, where family members became prominent Zionist leaders and were active in all facets of life.

Sarkozy's great-grandfather was a jeweler in Salonika, had seven children and died in 1913. His eldest child, Sarkozy's grandfather Aron "Beniko" Mallah, was born in 1890.

The family included Uncle Moshe, a rabbi and Zionist who published and edited, in 1898, El Avenir, the leading Greek paper for the Zionist movement. Cousin Asher was a Greek Senator who, in 1912, helped establish the Technion and served as the Greek Zionist Federation's first president. In the 1930s, he helped Jews immigrate to Israel, where he himself went in 1934.

A Jewish philanthropist, cousin Peppo Mallah also served in the Greek Parliament. In 1920, he was offered the post of Greek Minister of Finance, but he refused. According to the article, he was Israel's first ambassador to Greece.

A fire destroyed much of Salonika in 1917. Many Jewish properties, including those of the Mallah family, were confiscated by the government. Many Jews left Greece, and many relatives went to France, America and Israel.

When Beniko was 14, he and his mother moved to France where he studied medicine and served as a WWI French Army doctor, where he met his future wife, Adele Bouvieux or Bouvier, depending on the source. To marry her, he converted to Catholicism and changed his name to Benedict.

According to reports, Benedict remained very close to his Jewish family, and during World War II, he and his family (including daughters Susanne and Andree) hid, knowing he was still considered Jewish.

Of the Mallahs who stayed in Salonika or moved to France, 57 perished. According to the article, several revolted against the Nazis and Buena Malla underwent medical experiments in Birkenau.

His daughter Andree married Pal (later Paul) Nagy Bosca y Sarkozy, descendent of a Hungarian artistocratic family in 1950 and had three sons, including Nicolas. After a divorce, Andree raised the three children close to their grandfather. Nicolas was especially close to his grandfather and records this in his biography, according to the EJP story. Benedict died in 1972.

On a visit to Greece in July 2006, Sarkozy was honored with a plaque at the French Embassy in Athens by the Jewish Community of Salonika. It is inscribed "In memory of Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to Greece from the Thessaloniki Jewish Community, the town of your ancestors, mother and city of Israel and Jerusalem of the Balkans.”"

The community also gifted Sarkozy with his genealogical family tree back to his great-great-grandfather and pictures of his ancestors. Present at the event was community president David Saltiel's wife Lucy, who is also a Mallah descendent.

Sarkozy's wife Cecilia is identified in an EJP article as being of Jewish-Spanish ancestry.