title: History of the Jews in France

text: The fall of the Bastille was the signal for disorders everywhere in France. In certain districts of Alsace the peasants attacked the dwellings of the Jews, who took refuge in Basel. A gloomy picture of the outrages upon them was sketched before the National Assembly (3 August) by the abbé Henri Grégoire, who demanded their complete emancipation. The National Assembly shared the indignation of the prelate, but left the question of emancipation undecided; it was intimidated by the deputies of Alsace, especially by Jean-François Rewbell.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: On 22 December 1789, the Jewish question came again before the Assembly in debating the issue of admitting to public service all citizens without distinction of creed. Mirabeau, the abbé Grégoire, Robespierre, Duport, Barnave and the comte de Clermont-Tonnerre exerted all the power of their eloquence to bring about the desired emancipation; but the repeated disturbances in Alsace and the strong opposition of the deputies of that province and of the clericals, like La Fare, Bishop of Nancy, the abbé Maury, and others, caused the decision to be again postponed. Only the Portuguese and the Avignonese Jews, who had hitherto enjoyed all civil rights as naturalized Frenchmen, were declared full citizens by a majority of 150 on 28 January 1790. This partial victory infused new hope into the Jews of the German districts, who made still greater efforts in the struggle for freedom. They won over the eloquent advocate Godard, whose influence in revolutionary circles was considerable. Through his exertions the National Guards and the diverse sections pronounced themselves in favor of the Jews, and the abbé Malot was sent by the General Assembly of the Commune to plead their cause before the National Assembly. Unfortunately the grave affairs which absorbed the Assembly, the prolonged agitations in Alsace, and the passions of the clerical party kept in check the advocates of Jewish emancipation. A few days before the dissolution of the National Assembly (27 September 1791) a member of the Jacobin Club, formerly a parliamentary councilor, Duport, unexpectedly ascended the tribune and said,I believe that freedom of worship does not permit any distinction in the political rights of citizens on account of their creed. The question of the political existence of the Jews has been postponed. Still the Muslems and the men of all sects are admitted to enjoy political rights in France. I demand that the motion for postponement be withdrawn, and a decree passed that the Jews in France enjoy the privileges of full citizens.This proposition was accepted amid loud applause. Rewbell endeavored, indeed, to oppose the motion, but he was interrupted by Regnault de Saint-Jean, president of the Assembly, who suggested "that every one who spoke against this motion should be called to order, because he would be opposing the constitution itself".


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Judaism in France thus became, as the Alsatian deputy Schwendt wrote to his constituents, "nothing more than the name of a distinct religion". However, in Alsace, especially in the Bas-Rhin the reactionaries did not cease their agitations and Jews were victims of discriminations. During the Reign of Terror, at Bordeaux, Jewish bankers, compromised in the cause of the Girondins, had to pay important fines or to run away to save their lives while some Jewish bankers (49 according to the Jewish Encyclopedia) were imprisoned at Paris as suspects and nine of them were executed. The decree of the convention by which the Catholic faith was annulled and replaced by the worship of Reason was applied by the provincial clubs, especially by those of the German districts, to the Jewish religion as well. Some synagogues were pillaged and the mayors of a few eastern towns (Strasbourg, Troyes, etc.) forbade the celebration of Sabbath (to apply the week of ten days).


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Meanwhile, the French Jews gave proofs of their patriotism and of their gratitude to the land that had emancipated them. Many of them died in battle as part of the Army of the Republic while fighting the forces of Europe in coalition. To contribute to the war fund, candelabra of synagogues were sold, and wealthier Jews deprived themselves of their jewels to make similar contributions.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Though the Revolution had begun the process of Jewish emancipation in France, Napoleon also spread the concept in the lands he conquered across Europe, liberating Jews from their ghettos and establishing relative equality for them. The net effect of his policies significantly changed the position of the Jews in Europe. Starting in 1806, Napoleon passed a number of measures supporting the position of the Jews in the French Empire, including assembling a representative group elected by the Jewish community, the Grand Sanhedrin. In conquered countries, he abolished laws restricting Jews to ghettos. In 1807, he added Judaism as an official religion of France, with previously sanctioned Roman Catholicism, and Lutheran and Calvinist Protestantism. Despite the positive effects, it is unclear however, whether Napoleon himself was disposed favorably towards the Jews, or merely saw them as a political or financial tool. On 17 March 1808, Napoleon rolled back some reforms by the so-called "décret infâme", declaring all debts with Jews reduced, postponed, or annulled; this caused the Jewish community to nearly collapse. The decree also restricted where Jews could live, especially for those in the eastern French Empire, with all its annexations in the Rhineland and beyond (as of 1810), in hopes of assimilating them into society. Many of these restrictions were eased again in 1811 and finally abolished in 1818.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: The restoration of Louis XVIII did not materially change the political condition of the Jews. Enemies of the Jews cherished the hope that the Bourbons would hasten to undo the work of the Revolution with regard to Jewish emancipation, but were soon disappointed. The emancipation the French Jews had made enough progress that the clerical monarch could not find pretexts for curtailing their rights as citizens. They were no longer treated as poor, downtrodden peddlers or money-lenders with whom every petty official could do as he liked. Many of them already occupied high positions in the army and the magistracy, as well as in the arts and sciences.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Of the faiths recognized by the state, only Judaism had to support its ministers, while those of the Catholic and Protestant churches were supported by the government. This legal inferiority was removed in 1831, thanks to the intervention of the Duke of Orléans, lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and to the campaign led in Parliament by the deputies comte de Rambuteau and Jean Viennet. Encouraged by these prominent men, the minister of education, on 13 November 1830, offered a motion to place Judaism upon an equal footing with Catholicism and Protestantism as regards support for the synagogues and for the rabbis from the public treasury. The motion was accompanied by flattering compliments to the French Jews, "who", said the minister, "since the removal of their disabilities by the Revolution, have shown themselves worthy of the privileges granted to them". After a short discussion the motion was adopted by a large majority. In January 1831, it passed in the Chamber of Peers by 89 votes to 57, and on 8 February it was ratified by King Louis Philippe, who from the beginning had shown himself favorable to placing Judaism on an equal footing with the other faiths. Shortly afterward the rabbinical college, which had been founded at Metz in 1829, was recognized as a state institution, and was granted a subsidy. The government likewise liquidated the debts contracted by various Jewish communities before the Revolution.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Full equality did not occur until 1831. By the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, France provided an environment in which Jews took active and many times leading roles. The Napoleonic policy of "carrières aux talents", or 'careers for the gifted', permitted French Jews to enter previously forbidden fields such as the arts, finance, trade, and government. For this they were never forgiven by primarily Royalist and Catholic antisemites.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: While the Jews had been placed in every point the equals of their Christian fellow citizens, the oath "More Judaico" still continued to be administered to them, in spite of the repeated protestations of the rabbis and the consistory. It was only in 1846, owing to a brilliant speech of the Jewish lawyer Adolphe Crémieux, pronounced before the Court of Nîmes in defense of a rabbi who had refused to take this oath, and to a valuable essay on the subject by Martin, a prominent Christian advocate of Strasburg, that the Court of Cassation removed this last remnant of the legislation of the Middle Ages. With this act of justice the history of the Jews of France merges into the general history of the French people. The rapidity with which many of them won affluence and distinction in the nineteenth century is without parallel. In spite of the deep-rooted prejudices which prevailed in certain classes of French society, many of them occupied high positions in literature, art, science, jurisprudence, the army—indeed, in every walk of life. In 1860, the Alliance Israelite Universelle was formed "to work everywhere for the emancipation and moral progress of the Jews; to offer effective assistance to Jews suffering from antisemitism; and to encourage all publications calculated to promote this aim."


title: History of the Jews in France

text: In 1870, the "Crémieux decrees" granted automatic French citizenship to the approximately 40,000 Jews of Algeria, at that time a French "département", contrary to their Muslim neighbors.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: People of Jewish faith in France were becoming assimilated into their lives. After their Emancipation in 1791, Jews in France had new freedoms. For example, Jews were allowed to attend schools that were once delegated for just non-Jews. They were also allowed to pray in their own synagogues. Lastly, many Jews found themselves moving from the rural areas of France and into the big cities. In these big cities, Jews had new job opportunities and many were advancing up the economic ladder.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Although life was looking brighter for these Western Jews, some Jews who lived in Eastern Europe believed that the Emancipation in Western countries were causing the Jews to lose their traditional beliefs and culture. As more and more Jews were becoming assimilated into their new lives, these Jews were breaking away from rabbinical law and rabbinical authority decreased. For example, Jews were marrying outside of their religion and their children were growing up in homes where they were not being introduced to traditional beliefs and losing connection with their roots. Also, in these new urbanized Jewish homes, less and less Jews were following the strict rules of Kosher laws. Many Jews were so preoccupied with assimilating and prospering in their new lives that they formed a new type of Judaism that would fit with the times. The Reform Movement came about to let Jews stay connected to their roots while also living their lives without so many restrictions.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Alphonse Toussenel (1803–1885) was a political writer and zoologist who introduced antisemitism into French mainstream thinking. A utopian socialist and a disciple of Charles Fourier. He criticized the economic liberalism of the July Monarchy and denounced the ills of civilization: individualism, egoism, and class conflict. He was hostile to the Jews and also to the British. Toussenel's "Les juifs rois de l'époque, histoire de la féodalité financière" (1845) argued that French finance and commerce was controlled by an alien' Jewish presence, typified in the malign influence of the Rothschild banking family of France. Toussenel's antisemitism was rooted in a revolutionary-nationalist interpretation reading of French history. He was innovative and using zoology as a vehicle for social criticism, and his natural history books, as much as his political writings, were infused with antisemitic and anti-English sentiments. For Toussenel, the English and the Jews represented external and internal threats to French national identity.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Antisemitism based on racism emerged in the 1880s led by Edouard Drumont, who founded the Antisemitic League of France in 1889, and was the founder and editor of the newspaper "La Libre Parole". After spending years of research, he synthesized three major strands of antisemitism. The first strand was traditional Catholic attitudes toward the "Christ killers" augmented by vehement antipathy toward the French Revolution. The second strand was hostility to capitalism, of the sort promoted by the Socialist movement. The third strand was scientific racism, based on the argument that races have fixed characteristics, and the Jews have highly negative characteristics.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: The "Dreyfus affair" was a major political scandal that convulsed France from 1894 until its resolution in 1906, and which had reverberations for decades more. The affair is often seen as a modern and universal symbol of injustice for reasons of state and remains one of the most striking examples of a complex miscarriage of justice where the press and public opinion played a central role. The issue was blatant antisemitism as practiced by the Army and defended by traditionalists (especially Catholics) against secular and republican forces, including most Jews. In the end, the latter triumphed, albeit at a very high personal cost to Dreyfus himself.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: The affair began in November 1894 with the conviction for treason of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly having communicated French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, Dreyfus was sent to the penal colony at Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent almost five years.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Two years later, in 1896, evidence came to light identifying a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the real spy. After high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after the second day of his trial. The Army accused Dreyfus of additional charges based on false documents. Word of the military court's framing of Dreyfus and of an attendant cover-up began to spread, chiefly owing to "J'Accuse...!", a vehement open letter published in a Paris newspaper in January 1898 by the notable writer Émile Zola. Activists put pressure on the government to reopen the case.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France for another trial. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (now called "Dreyfusards"), such as Anatole France, Henri Poincaré and Georges Clemenceau, and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Édouard Drumont, the director and publisher of the antisemitic newspaper "La Libre Parole". The new trial resulted in another conviction and a 10-year sentence but Dreyfus was given a pardon and set free. Eventually, all the accusations against Alfred Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. In 1906 Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: The Affair from 1894 to 1906 divided France deeply and lastingly into two opposing camps: the pro-Army, mostly Catholic "anti-Dreyfusards" who generally lost the initiative to the anticlerical, pro-republican Dreyfusards. It embittered French politics and allowed the radicals to come to power.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: The relatively small Jewish community was based in Paris, and very well established in the city's business, financial, and intellectual elite. A third of Parisian bankers were Jewish, led by the Rothschild family, which also played a dominant role in the well organized Jewish community. Many of the most influential French intellectuals were nominally Jewish, including Henri Bergson, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and Emile Durkheim. The Dreyfus affair to some degree rekindled their sense of being Jewish. Jews were prominent in art and culture, typified by such artists as Modigliani, Soutine, and Chagall. The Jews considered themselves fully assimilated into French culture, for them Judaism was entirely a matter of religious belief, with minimal ethnic or cultural dimensions.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: By the time Dreyfus was fully exonerated in 1906, antisemitism declined sharply and it declined again during the First World War, as a nation was aware that many Jews died fighting for France. The antisemitic newspaper "La Libre Parole" closed in 1924, and the former anti-Dreyfusard Maurice Barrès included Jews among France's "spiritual families".


title: History of the Jews in France

text: After 1900, a wave of Jewish immigrants arrived, mostly fleeing the pogroms of Eastern Europe. The flow temporarily halted during World War I but resumed afterwards. The long-established, heavily assimilated Jewish population by 1920 was now only a third of the French Jewish population. It was overwhelmed by new immigrants and the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine. About 200,000 immigrants arrived, 1900 to 1939, mostly Yiddish-speakers from Russia and Poland as well as German-speaking Jews who fled the Nazi regime after 1933. The historic base of traditional Judaism was in Alsace-Lorraine, which was recovered by France in 1918.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: The new arrivals got along poorly with the established elite Jewish community. They did not want to assimilate, and they vigorously supported such new causes, especially Zionism and communism. The Yiddish influx and the Jewishness of the Popular Front's leader Léon Blum contributed to a revival of antisemitism in the 1930s. Conservative writers such as Paul Morand, Pierre Gaxotte, Marcel Jouhandeau, and the leader of "Action française" Charles Maurras denounced Jews. Perhaps the most violent antisemitic writer was Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who wrote, "I feel myself very friendly to Hitler, and to all Germans, whom I feel to be my brothers... Our real enemies are Jews and Masons", and "Yids are like bedbugs". By 1937, even mainstream French conservatives and socialists, not previously associated with antisemitism, denounced the alleged Jewish influence pushing the country into a "Jewish war" against Nazi Germany. The new intensity of antisemitism facilitated the extremism of the Vichy regime after 1940.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: When France came under occupation by Nazi Germany in June 1940, there were about 330,000 Jews living in France (and 370,000 in French North Africa). Of the 330,000, fewer than half held French citizenship. The others were foreigners, mostly exiles from Germany and Central Europe who had immigrated to France during the 1930s. Another 110,000 French Jews were living in the colony of French Algeria.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: About 200,000 Jews, and the large majority of foreign Jews, resided in the Paris area. Among the 150,000 French Jews, about 30,000, generally native to Central Europe, had obtained French citizenship after immigrating to France during the 1930s. Following the 1940 armistice after Germany occupied France, the Nazis incorporated the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine into Germany. The remainder of northern and western France was placed under German military control. Unoccupied southern metropolitan France and the French empire were placed under the control of the Vichy Regime, a new collaborationist French government. Some Jews managed to escape the invading German forces. Some found refuge in the countryside. Spain allowed 25,600 Jews to use its territory as an escape route.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: German occupation forces published their first anti-Jewish measure on 27 September 1940 as the "First Ordinance." The measure was a census of Jews, and defined "who is a Jew." The Second Ordinance was published on 18 October 1940, proscribing various business activities for Jews. On 31 August 1941 German forces confiscated all radios belonging to Jews, followed by their telephones, their bicycles, and disconnecting all phones to Jews. They were forbidden to use public telephones. Jews were forbidden to change their address, and next were forbidden to leave their homes between 8 pm and 5 am. All public places, parks, theatres and certain shops were soon closed to Jews. German forces issued new restrictions, prohibitions and decrees by the week. Jews were barred from public swimming pools, restaurants, cafes, cinemas, concerts, music halls, etc. On the metro, they were allowed to ride only in the last carriage. Antisemitic articles were frequently published in newspapers since the Occupation. The Germans organized antisemitic exhibitions to spread their propaganda. The music of Jewish composers was banned, as were works of art by Jewish artists. On 2 October 1941, seven synagogues were bombed. Still, the vast majority of synagogues remained opened during the whole war in the Zone libre. The Vichy government even protected them after attacks as a way to deny persecution.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: The first roundup of Jews took place on 14 May 1941, and 4,000 foreign Jews were taken captive. Another roundup took place on 20 August 1941, collecting both French and foreign Jews, who were sent to the Drancy internment camp and other concentration camps in France. Roundups continued, collecting French nationals, including lawyers and other professionals. On 12 December 1941, the most distinguished members of the Paris Jewish community, including doctors, academics, scientists and writers, were rounded up. On 29 May 1942, the Eighth Ordinance was published, which ordered Jews to wear the yellow star. The most notorious roundup was the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, which required detailed planning and the use of the full resources of French police forces. This roundup took place on 16 and 17 July 1942; it collected nearly 13,000 Jews, 7,000 of whom, including more than 4,000 children, were interned and locked into the Vélodrome d'Hiver, without adequate food or sanitation.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: In the meantime, the Germans began deportations of Jews from France to the death camps in eastern Europe. The first trains left on 27 March 1942. Deportations continued until 17 August 1944, by which time nearly 76,000 Jews (including those from Vichy France) were deported, of whom only 2,500 survived. (see Timeline of deportations of French Jews to death camps.) The majority of Jews deported were non-French Jews. One quarter of the pre-war Jewish population of France was killed in that process.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Antisemitism was particularly virulent in Vichy France, which controlled a third of France from 1940 to 1942, at which point the Germans took over that southern area. Vichy's Jewish policy was a mixture of 1930s antiforeigner legislation with the virulent antisemitism of the Action Française movement. The Vichy government openly collaborated with the Nazi occupiers to identify Jews for deportation and transportation to the death camps. As early as October 1940, without any request from the Germans, the Vichy government passed anti-Jewish measures (the Vichy laws on the status of Jews), prohibiting them from moving, and limiting their access to public places and most professional activities, especially the practice of medicine. The Vichy government also implemented those anti-Jewish laws in the colonies of Vichy North Africa. In 1941, the Vichy government established a "Commissariat général aux questions juives (1941-1944)," which in 1942 worked with the Gestapo to round-up Jews. They participated in the Vel' d'Hiv roundup on 16 and 17 July 1942.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: On the other hand, France is recognised as the nation with the third highest number of Righteous Among the Nations (according to the Yad Vashem museum, 2006). This award is given to "non-Jews who acted according to the most noble principles of humanity by risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust."


title: History of the Jews in France

text: In 1995 French President Jacques Chirac formally apologized to the Jewish community for the complicit role that French policemen and civil servants played in the roundups. He said:


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Chirac also identified those who were responsible: "450 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders [who] obeyed the demands of the Nazis."


title: History of the Jews in France

text: In July 2017, while at a ceremony at the site of the Vélodrome d'Hiver, France's President Emmanuel Macron denounced the country's role in the Holocaust and the historical revisionism that denied France's responsibility for 1942 roundup and subsequent deportation of 13,000 Jews (or the eventual deportation of 76,000 Jews). He refuted claims that the Vichy government, in power during WW II, did not represent the State. "It was indeed France that organised this", French police collaborating with the Nazis. "Not a single German" was directly involved, he added.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Neither Chirac nor François Hollande had specifically stated that the Vichy government, in power during World War II, actually represented the French State. Macron on the other hand, made it clear that the government during the War was indeed that of France. "It is convenient to see the Vichy regime as born of nothingness, returned to nothingness. Yes, it's convenient, but it is false. We cannot build pride upon a lie."


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Macron made a subtle reference to Chirac's 1995 apology when he added, "I say it again here. It was indeed France that organized the roundup, the deportation, and thus, for almost all, death."


title: History of the Jews in France

text: In the wake of the Holocaust, around 180,000 Jews remained in France, many of whom were refugees from Eastern Europe who either could not or would not return to their former home countries. To prevent the types of abuses that took place under the German Occupation and Vichy Regime, the legislature passed laws to suppress antisemitic harassment and actions, and established educational programs.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: The surviving French Jews were joined in the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s by large numbers of Jews from France's predominantly Muslim North African colonies (along with millions of other French nationals) as part of the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries. They fled to France because of the decline of the French Empire and a surge in Muslim Antisemitism following the founding of Israel and Israel's victories in the Six-Day War and other Arab-Israeli wars.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: By 1951, France's Jewish population totalled around 250,000. Between 1956 and 1967, about 235,000 Sephardi Jews from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco immigrated to France.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: By 1968, Sephardi Jews from the former French possessions in North Africa constituted the majority of the Jews of France. Before World War II and the Holocaust, French Jews were predominately from the Ashkenazi tradition and culture. The Sephardim, who follow nusach sepharad (Judaism as per the Sephardic ritual, according to Dan Michman's definition of such Jews), have since had a significant influence on the nature of French Jewish culture. These Jews from French North Africa have generally enjoyed a successful social and economic integration and helped reinvigorate the country's Jewish community. Kosher restaurants and Jewish schools have multiplied, in particular since the 1980s. In part in response to internal and international events, many of the younger generations have committed to religious renewal.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: In the 1980 Paris synagogue bombing, France's Jewish population suffered its first deadly terrorist attack since actions of the German occupation in the Second World War. The attack followed an increase in antisemitic incidents in the late 1970s by Neo Nazis.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Since World War II, France's government has varied in supporting and opposing the Israeli government. It was initially a very strong supporter of Israel, voting for its formation at the United Nations. It was Israel's main ally and primary supplier of military hardware for nearly two decades between 1948 and 1967.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: After the military alliance between France and Israel during the 1956 Suez Crisis, relations between Israel and France remained strong. It is widely believed that, as a result of the Protocol of Sèvres agreement, the French government secretly transported parts of its own atomic technology to Israel in the late 1950s which the Israeli government used to create nuclear weapons.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: But, after the end of the Algerian War in 1962, in which Algeria gained independence, France began to shift toward a more pro-Arab view. This change accelerated rapidly after the Six-Day War in 1967, in which the relations became strained. Following the war, the United States became Israel's main supplier of weapons and military technology. After the 1972 Munich massacre at the Olympics, the French government refused to extradite Abu Daoud, one of the planners of the attack. Both France and Israel participated in the 15-year-long Lebanese Civil War.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: France has the largest Jewish population in Europe and the third largest Jewish population in the world (after Israel and the United States). The Jewish community in France is estimated from a core population of 480,000–500,000 to an enlarged population of 600,000.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: In 2009, France's highest court, the council of state issued a ruling recognising the state's responsibility in the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews during World War II. The report cited "mistakes" in the Vichy regime that had not been forced by the occupiers, stating that the state "allowed or facilitated the deportation from France of victims of anti-Semitism".


title: History of the Jews in France

text: In the early 2000s, rising levels of antisemitism among French Muslims and antisemitic acts were publicized around the world, including the desecration of Jewish graves and tensions between the children of North African Muslim immigrants and North African Jewish children. One of the worst crimes happened when Ilan Halimi was mutilated and tortured to death by the so-called "Barbarians gang", led by Youssouf Fofana. This murder was motivated by money and fueled by antisemitic prejudices (the perpetrators said they believed Jews to be rich). In March 2012, a gunman, who had previously killed three soldiers, opened fire at a Jewish school in Toulouse in an antisemitic attack, killing four people, including three children. President Nicolas Sarkozy said, "I want to say to all the leaders of the Jewish community, how close we feel to them. All of France is by their side."


title: History of the Jews in France

text: However, Jewish philanthropist Baron Eric de Rothschild suggested that the extent of antisemitism in France has been exaggerated and that "France was not an antisemitic country". The Newspaper "Le Monde Diplomatique" had earlier said the same thing. According to a 2005 poll made by the Pew Research Center, there is no evidence of any specific antisemitism in France, which, according to this poll, appears to be one of the least antisemitic countries in Europe, though France has the world's third largest Jewish population. France is the country that had the most favourable views of Jews in Europe (82%), next to the Netherlands, and the country with the third-least unfavourable views (16%) next to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Rises in antisemitism in modern France have been linked to the intensifying Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Between the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza in late December 2008 and its end in January 2009, an estimated hundred antisemitic acts were recorded in France. This compares with a total of 250 antisemitic acts in the whole of 2007. In 2009, 832 acts of antisemitism were recorded in France (with, in the first half of 2009, an estimated 631 acts, more than the whole of 2008, 474), in 2010, 466 and, in 2011, 389. In 2011, there were 260 threats (100 graffitis, 46 flyers or mails, 114 insults) and 129 crimes (57 assaults, 7 arsons or attempted arsons, 65 deteriorations and acts of vandalism but no murder, attempted murder or terrorist attack) recorded.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Between 2000 and 2009, 13,315 French Jews moved to Israel, or made aliyah, an increase compared to the previous decade (1990–1999 : 10,443) that was in the continuity of a similar increase since the 1970s. A peak was reached during this period, in 2005 (2005: 2,951 Olim) but a significant proportion (between 20 and 30%) eventually came back to France. Some immigrants cited antisemitism and the growing Arab population as reasons for leaving. One couple who moved to Israel claimed that rising antisemitism by French Muslims and the anti-Israel bias of the French government was making life for Jews increasingly uncomfortable for them. At a welcoming ceremony for French Jews in the summer of 2004, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon caused controversy when he advised all French Jews to "move immediately" to Israel and escape what he coined "the wildest anti-semitism" in France. In August 2007, some 2,800 olim were due to arrive in Israel from France, as opposed to the 3,000 initially forecast. 1,129 French Jews made aliyah to Israel in 2009 and 1,286 in 2010.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: However, in the long term, France is not one of the top countries of Jewish emigration toward Israel. Many French Jews feel a strong attachment to France. In November 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a joint press conference with François Hollande advised the French Jewish community by saying ""In my role as Prime Minister of Israel, I always say to Jews, wherever they may be, I say to them: Come to Israel and make Israel your home."" alluding to former Israel Prime Minister's Ariel Sharon's similar advisement towards the French Jewish community to move to Israel back in 2004.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: During the first few months of 2014, The Jewish Agency of Israel continued to encourage an increase of French aliyah through aliyah fairs, Hebrew-language courses, sessions that assist potential olim to find jobs in Israel, and immigrant absorption in Israel. A May 2014 survey revealed that 74 percent of French Jews considered leaving France for Israel where of the 74 percent, 29.9 percent cited anti-Semitism. Another 24.4 cited their desire to "preserve their Judaism," while 12.4 percent said they were attracted by other countries. "Economic considerations" was cited by 7.5 percent of the respondents. By June 2014, it was estimated by the end of 2014 a full 1 percent of the French Jewish community would have made aliyah to Israel, the largest in a single year. Many Jewish leaders stated that emigration is being driven by a combination of factors, including the cultural gravitation towards Israel and France's economic woes, especially for the younger generation drawn by the possibility of other socioeconomic opportunities in the more vibrant Israeli economy. Others point out that in 2014, many dramatic incidents of antisemitism took place, especially during Operation Protective Edge, and that France took an unusual pro-Palestine stance by recognizing the State of Palestine in Parliament and by undertaking to adopt a resolution in the United Nations Security Council which would unilaterally impose an end of the Israel-Arab conflict on Israel. At the end of 2014, a record 7,000 French Jews are reported to have made Aliyah. Some wealthy French Jewish families are choosing to immigrate to the United States instead, with "less red tape" for business than Israel.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: In January 2015, events such as the Charlie Hebdo shooting and Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis created a shock wave of fear across the French Jewish community. As a result of these events, the Jewish Agency planned an aliyah plan for 120,000 French Jews who wish to make aliyah. In addition, with Europe's stagnant economy as of early 2015, many affluent French Jewish skilled professionals, business moguls and investors have sought Israel as a start-up haven for international investments, as well as job and new business opportunities. In addition, Dov Maimon, a French Jewish émigré who studies migration as a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, expects as many as 250,000 French Jews to make aliyah by the year 2030.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Hours after the 2015 Saint-Quentin-Fallavier attack on a gas factory near Lyon on 26 June 2015, in which the severed head of a local (non-Jewish) businessman was pinned to the gates and an ISIS flag was raised, Immigration and Absorption Minister Ze'ev Elkin strongly urged the French Jewish community to move to Israel and made it a national priority for Israel to welcome the French Jewish community with open arms. Immigration from France is on the rise: in the first half of 2015, approximately 5,100 French Jews made aliyah to Israel marking 25% more than in the same period during the previous year.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: Following the November 2015 Paris attacks, committed by suspected ISIS affiliates reputedly in retaliation for Opération Chammal, more than 80 percent of French Jews considered making aliyah. The largest attack on the evening of 13 November killed 90 people, leaving 200 wounded at a rock concert in the Bataclan Theatre in Paris. Although its long time Jewish owners (who regularly set Jewish events there, including some in support of Israel) had sold the theatre shortly before the massacre, speculation arose about an antisemitic motive behind the attack, but this was not a popular theory in the French media. However, to some, this possible antisemitic motive was concealed by the general media, raising questions about the media's motives to do this, an issue reflected in the French Jewish community press.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: According to the Jewish Agency, nearly 6500 French Jews had made aliyah as of mid-November 2015 and it was estimated that 8000 French Jews would settle down in Israel by the end of 2015.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: In January 2016, a 35-year-old teacher in Marseille was attacked with a machete by a Kurdish teenager. Some Jewish groups debated recommending that Jews not wear the kippah in public. A 73 year old Jewish municipal councillor in Créteil was murdered in his apartment the same month.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: On 4 April 2017, the horrific murder of a 65-year-old French Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, in her popular neighborhood home of Belleville in Paris, around the corner from a mosque reputed for its radicalism, and as police standing in the staircase heard the murderer yelling "Allahu akbar" repeatedly for minutes, and did not intervene in spite of the screams and the beating, has raised questions again. As it took several months for the French justice to qualify this murder as an antisemitic act, concern about an institutional covering of antisemitism increased. It was further feared as Roger Pinto was mugged with his family during a burglary at his Livry-Gargan home on 8 September 2017. Pinto soon witnessed that, as for Ilan Halimi's murder, he was told, "You are Jewish so you must have money;" this attack has neither been qualified as an anti-semitic act.


title: History of the Jews in France

text: On 23 March 2018, an 85-year-old French Jewish woman and Holocaust survivor, Mireille Knoll, was found dead in her apartment in the east of the French capital, where she lived alone. She was murdered by two Muslim suspects, one of which she had known since he was a child. The chief rabbi of Paris, Haïm Korsia, wrote on Twitter that he was "horrified" by the killing.


title: William Kentridge

text: William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films, especially noted for a sequence of hand-drawn animated films he produced during the 1990s. The latter are constructed by filming a drawing, making erasures and changes, and filming it again. He continues this process meticulously, giving each change to the drawing a quarter of a second to two seconds' screen time. A single drawing will be altered and filmed this way until the end of a scene. These palimpsest-like drawings are later displayed along with the films as finished pieces of art.


title: William Kentridge

text: Kentridge has created art work as part of design of theatrical productions, both plays and operas. He has served as art director and overall director of numerous productions, collaborating with other artists, puppeteers and others in creating productions that combine drawings and multi-media combinations.


title: William Kentridge

text: Kentridge was born in Johannesburg in 1955 to Sydney Kentridge and Felicia Geffen, a Jewish family. Both were advocates (barristers) who represented people marginalized by the apartheid system. He was educated at King Edward VII School in Houghton, Johannesburg. He showed great artistic promise from an early age. In 2016 he became perhaps the first artist to have a catalogue raisonné devoted exclusively to his juvenilia.


title: William Kentridge

text: He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics and African Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand and then a diploma in Fine Arts from the Johannesburg Art Foundation. In the early 1980s, he studied mime and theatre at the L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. He originally hoped to become an actor, but said later: "I was fortunate to discover at a theatre school that I was so bad an actor [... that] I was reduced to an artist, and I made my peace with it." Between 1975 and 1991, he was acting and directing with Johannesburg's Junction Avenue Theatre Company. In the 1980s, he worked on television films and series as an art director.


title: William Kentridge

text: Kentridge believed that being ethnically Jewish gave him a unique position as a third-party observer in South Africa. His parents were lawyers, well-known for their defence of victims of apartheid. Kentridge developed an ability to remove himself somewhat from the atrocities committed under the later regimes. The basics of South Africa's socio-political condition and history must be known to grasp his work fully, much the same as in the cases of such artists as Francisco Goya and Käthe Kollwitz.


title: William Kentridge

text: Kentridge has practiced expressionist art: form often alludes to content and "vice versa". The feeling that is manipulated by the use of palette, composition and media, among others, often plays an equally vital role in the overall meaning as the subject and narrative of a given work. One must use one's gut reactions as well as one's interpretive skills to find meaning in Kentridge's work, much of which reveals very little content. Due to the sparse, rough and expressive qualities of Kentridge's handwriting, the viewer sees a sombre picture upon first glance, an impression that is perpetuated as the image illustrates a vulnerable and uncomfortable situation.


title: William Kentridge

text: Aspects of social injustice that have transpired over the years in South Africa have often become fodder for Kentridge's pieces. "Casspirs Full of Love", viewable at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, appears to be nothing more than heads in boxes to the average American viewer, but South Africans know that a casspir is a vehicle used to put down riots, a kind of a crowd-control tank.


title: William Kentridge

text: The title, "Casspirs Full of Love", written along the side of the print, is suggestive of the narrative and is oxymoronic. A casspir full of love is much like a bomb that bursts with happiness – it is an intangible improbability. The purpose of a machine such as this is to instil "peace" by force, but Kentridge noted that it was used as a tool to keep lower-class natives from taking colonial power and money.


title: William Kentridge

text: By the mid-1970s, Kentridge was making prints and drawings. In 1979, he created 20 to 30 monotypes, which soon became known as the "Pit" series. In 1980, he executed about 50 small-format etchings which he called the "Domestic Scenes". These two extraordinary groups of prints served to establish Kentridge's artistic identity, an identity he has continued to develop in various media. Despite his ongoing exploration of non-traditional media, the foundation of his art has always been drawing and printmaking.


title: William Kentridge

text: In 1986, he began a group of charcoal and pastel drawings based, very tenuously, on Watteau's Embarkation for Cythera. These extremely important works, the best of which reflect a blasted, dystopic urban landscape, demonstrate the artist's growing consciousness of the flexibility of space and movement.


title: William Kentridge

text: In 1996–1997, he produced a portfolio of eight prints titled "Ubu Tells the Truth", based on Alfred Jarry's 1896 play "Ubu Roi". These prints also relate to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission conducted in South Africa after the end of apartheid. One of the stark and somber prints from this portfolio, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, is illustrated.


title: William Kentridge

text: The "Six Drawing Lessons", delivered as part of The Norton Lectures series at Harvard University in 2012, consider the work in the studio and the studio as a place of making meaning developed. A series of large drawings of trees in Indian ink on found encyclopedia pages, torn up and reassembled, analyzes the form of different trees indigenous to southern Africa. Drawn across multiple pages from books, each drawing is put together as a puzzle – the single pages first painted, then the whole pieced together.


title: William Kentridge

text: "My drawings don't start with a 'beautiful mark'," writes Kentridge, thinking about the activity of printmaking as being about getting the hand to lead the brain, rather than letting the brain lead the hand. "It has to be a mark of something out there in the world. It doesn't have to be an accurate drawing, but it has to stand for an observation, not something that is abstract, like an emotion."


title: William Kentridge

text: Between 1989 and 2003 Kentridge made a series of nine short films, which he eventually gathered under the title "9 Drawings for Projection." In 1989, he began the first of those animated movies, "Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City After Paris". The series runs through "Monument" (1990), "Mine" (1991), "Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old" (1991), "Felix in Exile" (1994), "History of the Main Complaint" (1996), "Weighing and Wanting" (1997), and "Stereoscope" (1999), up to "Tide Table" (2003) and "Other Faces", 2011.


title: William Kentridge

text: For the series, he used a technique that would become a feature of his work – successive charcoal drawings, always on the same sheet of paper, contrary to the traditional animation technique in which each movement is drawn on a separate sheet. In this way, Kentridge's videos and films came to keep the traces of the previous drawings. His animations deal with political and social themes from a personal and, at times, autobiographical point of view, since the author includes his self-portrait in many of his works.


title: William Kentridge

text: The political content and unique techniques of Kentridge's work have propelled him into the realm of South Africa's top artists. Working with what is in essence a very restrictive media, using only charcoal and a touch of blue or red pastel, he has created animations of astounding depth. A theme running through all of his work is his peculiar way of representing his birthplace. While he does not portray it as the militant or oppressive place that it was for black people, he does not emphasise the picturesque state of living that white people enjoyed during apartheid either; he presents instead a city in which the duality of man is exposed. In a series of nine short films, he introduces two characters – Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitlebaum. These characters depict an emotional and political struggle that ultimately reflects the lives of many South Africans in the pre-democracy era.


title: William Kentridge

text: "In the same way that there is a human act of dismembering the past there is a natural process in the terrain through erosion, growth, dilapidation that also seeks to blot out events. In South Africa this process has other dimensions. The very term 'new South Africa' has within it the idea of a painting over the old, the natural process of dismembering, the naturalization of things new."


title: William Kentridge

text: Not only in "Felix In Exile" but in all his animated works, the concepts of time and change comprise a major theme. He conveys it through his erasure technique, which contrasts with conventional cel-shaded animation, whose seamlessness de-emphasizes the fact that it is actually a succession of hand-drawn images. This he implements by drawing a key frame, erasing certain areas of it, re-drawing them and thus creating the next frame. He is able in this way to create as many frames as he wants based on the original key frame simply by erasing small sections. Traces of what has been erased are still visible to the viewer; as the films unfold, a sense of fading memory or the passing of time and the traces it leaves behind are portrayed. Kentridge's technique grapples with what is not said, what remains suppressed or forgotten but can easily be felt.


title: William Kentridge

text: In the nine films that follow Soho Eckstein's life, an increasing vehemence is placed on the health of the individual and contemporary South African society. Conflicts between anarchic and bourgeois individualistic beliefs, again a reference to the duality of man, indicate the idea of social revolution by poetically disfiguring surrounding buildings and landscapes. Kentridge states that, although his work does not focus on apartheid in a direct and overt manner, but on the contemporary state of Johannesburg, his drawings and films are certainly influenced by the brutalised society that resulted from the regime.


title: William Kentridge

text: As for more direct political issues, Kentridge says his art presents ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted movements and uncertain endings, all of which seem like insignificant subtleties but can be attributed to most of the calamity presented in his work. In a mixed-media triptych entitled "The Boating Party" (1985), based on Renoir's painting of a similar name, the havoc caused by a seemingly-uninterested aristocracy is perhaps his most severe comment on the state of South Africa during apartheid. The languid diners sit at ease while the surrounding area is ravaged, torn and burned, a contrast that is reflected in his style and choice of colours.


title: William Kentridge

text: In 1988, Kentridge co-founded Free Film-makers Co-Operative in Johannesburg. In 1999, he was appointed a film-maker by Stereoscope.


title: William Kentridge

text: "Purely in the context of my own work," he wrote in a published playscript of his celebrated "Ubu and the Truth Commission", "I would repeat my trust in the contingent, the inauthentic, the whim, the practical, as strategies for finding meaning. I would repeat my mistrust in the worth of Good Ideas. And state a belief that somewhere between relying on pure chance on the one hand, and the execution of a programme on the other, lies the most uncertain but the most fertile ground for the work we do [...]. I think I have shown that it is not the clear light of reason or even aesthetic sensibility which determines how one works, but a constellation of factors only some of which we can change at will."In 2001, Creative Time aired his film "Shadow Procession" on the NBC Astrovision Panasonic screen in Times Square.


title: William Kentridge

text: Kentridge has been commissioned to create stage design and act as a theatre director in opera. His political perspective is expressed in his opera directions, which involves different layers: stage direction, animation movies, and influences of the puppet world. He has staged "Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria" (Monteverdi), "Die Zauberflöte" (Mozart) and "The Nose" (Shostakovich). Following the last work, he collaborated with the French composer François Sarhan on a short show called "Telegrams from the Nose," for which he made the stage and set design for the performance.


title: William Kentridge

text: In November 2015 his "provocative and visually stunning new staging" of Berg's "Lulu", premièred at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, a co-production with the English National Opera and the Dutch National Opera. On 8 August 2017, William Kentridge's "Wozzeck" (Alban Berg) premièred at the Salzburg Festival and received enthusiastic reactions. "The Head and the Load", Holland Festival, Amsterdam 2019


title: William Kentridge

text: Kentridge's protean artistic investigation continues in his series of tapestries begun in 2001. The tapestries stem from a series of drawings in which he conjured shadowy figures from ripped construction paper; he made a collage of these with the web-like background of nineteenth-century atlas maps. To adapt these figures as tapestry, Kentridge worked in close collaboration with the Johannesburg-based Stephens Tapestry Studio, mapping cartoons from enlarged photographs of the drawings and hand-picking dyes to colour the locally spun mohair (goat hair).


title: William Kentridge

text: In 2009, Kentridge, in partnership with Gerhard Marx, created a 10m-tall sculpture for his home city of Johannesburg entitled "Fire Walker." In 2012 his sculpture, "Il cavaliere di Toledo", was unveiled in Naples. "Rebus" (2013), referring in title to the allusional device using pictures to represent words or parts of words, is a series of bronze sculptures that form two distinct images when turned to a certain angle; when paired in correspondence, for example, a final image – a nude – is created from two original forms – a stamp and a telephone.


title: William Kentridge

text: In 2016, the anniversary of Rome's legendary founding in 753BC, Kentridge unveiled "Triumphs and Laments", a monumental mural along the right bank of the river Tiber. The 550m-long frieze depicting a procession of more than 80 figures from Roman mythology to the present is Kentridge’s largest public work to date. To celebrate its launch, he and his long-time collaborator, the composer Philip Miller, devised a series of performances featuring live shadow play and more than 40 musicians.


title: William Kentridge

text: Kentridge is married to Anne Stanwix, a rheumatologist, and they have three children. A third-generation South African of Lithuanian-Jewish heritage, he is the son of the South African lawyer Sydney Kentridge and the lawyer and activist Felicia Kentridge.


title: William Kentridge

text: Kentridge's works are included in the following permanent collections: Honolulu Museum of Art, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Tate Modern (London). An edition of the five-channel video installation "The Refusal of Time" (2012), which debuted at documenta 13, was jointly acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2015, Kentridge gave the definitive collection of his archive and art – films, videos and digital works – to the George Eastman Museum, one of the world's largest and oldest photography and film collections.


title: William Kentridge

text: Kentridge's Five Themes exhibit was included in the 2009 Time 100, an annual list of the one hundred top people and events in the world. That same year, the exhibition was awarded First Place in the 2009 AICA (International Association of Art Critics Awards) Best Monographic Museum Show Nationally category.


title: William Kentridge

text: In 2012, Kentridge was in residence at Harvard University invited to deliver the distinguished Charles Eliot Norton lectures in early 2012.


title: William Kentridge

text: Kentridge's artworks are among the most sought-after and expensive works in South Africa: "a major charcoal drawing by world-renowned South African artist William Kentridge could set you back some £250,000". Kentridge is represented by Goodman Gallery and Marian Goodman Gallery in New York and Lia Rumma Gallery in Italy.


title: William Kentridge

text: The South African record for Kentridge is R6.6 million ($320,000), set at Aspire Art Auctions in Johannesburg in 2018. One of his works reached $600,000 at Sotheby's New York in 2011.


title: Nissan President

text: The is a Japanese luxury sedan that manufactured and marketed by Nissan from 1965 to 2010 as a JDM luxury sedan, the flagship of Nissan's range, marketed at its "Nissan Motor Store" dealerships.


title: Nissan President

text: Initially marketed in the JDM, in the late 1980s, exports began to a few countries including Singapore and Hong Kong, though sales were limited. When the President was introduced in 1965, it was marketed under the "Nissan" badge, unlike other Nissan products at the time, which were marketed under the Datsun brand.


title: Nissan President

text: The first generation of the Nissan President, designated "H150", was introduced in October 1965, replacing the Cedric Special as Nissan's top-of-the-range model, and was exclusive to Japanese Nissan dealerships called "Nissan Motor Store". Ownership costs of the President were expensive due to its external dimensions and engine displacement placing it in the top road tax bracket, and Japanese Government dimension regulations. The President appeared after the Toyota Crown Eight debuted in 1963, and was developed by Nissan as a possible submission for a limousine to be used by the Imperial Household Agency of Japan.


title: Nissan President

text: Its appearance is very similar to the smaller but more popular Nissan Bluebird introduced earlier in 1964. Like the Bluebird, the President was built at Nissan's Oppama plant in Yokosuka, Kanagawa.


title: Nissan President

text: The President was available with either the 4.0-litre "Y40" V8 engine, developed specially for that model, or the 3.0-litre "H30" straight-six. Very lavishly appointed for its time, the President served as the official car of the Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Satō, while the Emperor of Japan was transported in one of four Nissan Prince Royals developed by Prince Motor Company. In 1971 Nissan offered EAL (Electro Anti-lock System) as an option on the Nissan President, this became Japan's first electronic ABS (Anti-lock braking system). There were a few trim levels, but most were sold as the fully-loaded Spec-D that featured the "Full Power Equipment" specification with power seats, power windows, twin A/C units, central door locks, plenty of interior lights and remote-controlled auto-tuning radio, among other features. The Spec-C was similar to the Spec-D, but without the power features. Spec-B was powered by the 130 hp H30 engine carried over from the Cedric Special 50. The base Spec-A was also powered by the H30, but had a 3-speed column-shift manual, the only version with a manual transmission as Spec-B, C and D had an automatic transmission. Few changes were made to the 150 series, but in 1971 the outside mirrors were moved closer to the front of the car, the location of the windshield wipers were changed to increase the amount of glass they swept, and the automatic transmission was changed from Borg-Warner to Nissan. The Spec-C trim level was dropped after 1971; all V8 models were only available in Spec-D.


title: Nissan President

text: The second generation, designated "H250", was introduced in 1973. It received a complete upgrade inside and out, while the chassis was essentially the same. The Y40 engine was replaced by the new Y44, which received electronic fuel injection in 1975, becoming the Y44E. The H30 six-cylinder remained available until 1974. In 1975, all trim levels except the Spec-D were dropped, which meant the H30 engine and manual transmission were dropped as well; all Presidents would have V8 engines and automatic transmissions going forward. The Sovereign trim was added in 1977 and the Spec-C trim level returned in 1978.


title: Nissan President

text: In 1982 the President was updated with suspension improvements, a larger fuel tank, a new instrument cluster, and the replacement of the round headlights with square halogen versions while maintaining the exterior and interior appearance. In 1985 the Sovereign VIP trim was added. Production of the 250 series continued until 1990.


title: Nissan President

text: In October 1989 the third generation President, designated "JHG50", debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show, with sales beginning a year later. Concurrently, a short-wheelbase version of the chassis debuted in the United States as Infiniti Q45 or Nissan Infiniti Q45 in Japan, with a different front and rear end — in response to the Lexus LS January 1989 and the Honda Legend in 1985. Renewed emphasis sought to position the President as a top-level luxury limousine, with high levels of standard equipment, including Connolly Leather or wool and silk upholstery. Innovative technological features included a world first feature that debuted in 1993: SRS airbag for the left-hand side (curbside) rear seat passenger. Both the President and the Q45 shared the new 4.5-litre "VH45DE" V8 engine. In 1993, a short-wheelbase version similar to the Infiniti joined the lineup, badged as President JS. At the same time, Nissan's special vehicles subsidiary Autech developed a Royal Limousine model with split passenger compartment. The Royal was created as a possible replacement for the four 1966 Nissan Prince Royals used by the Imperial Household Agency for the Coronation Ceremony, or "Shukuga Onretsu no Gi" of Akihito 12 November 1990, but were not accepted.


title: Nissan President

text: In 1994, along with a minor facelift, Nissan revived the Sovereign trim level (previously available for "250" Presidents) for the long-wheelbase model. Another minor facelift occurred in 1998 (designated PHG50). At the same time, the previous Infiniti Q45 was replaced by a model based on a smaller (yet still large) Nissan Cima, which was also fitted with the rear passenger airbag option in Japan. The PHG50 continued in production till 2002 with the arrival of the new F50 chassis.


title: Nissan President

text: The third generation was introduced in October 2003, based on the "F50" Nissan Cima which had debuted in 2001, being also powered by the same 4.5-litre "VK45DE" V8 engine. It retained its top position as the flagship limousine at the reorganized Japanese Nissan dealerships called "Nissan Blue Stage". Two versions were available, both badged Sovereign, with either five-passenger or four-passenger seating configuration. This model remained Nissan's traditional competitor to the Toyota limousines the Toyota Century and Toyota Celsior, and it competed for customers for three years with the all-new Mitsubishi Dignity as the top level flagship, however Mitsubishi chose to use front wheel drive.


title: Nissan President

text: The four-passenger version is considerably more expensive and features lavish equipment, including a Bose sound system and a host of other electronic devices controlled from a panel in the rear central armrest, as well as a "relaxing seat"—a feature allowing the left front passenger seat to be tilted forward, allowing the passenger in the rear to extend the rear seat forward and recline.


title: Nissan President

text: In August 2010, Nissan announced that it had stopped the production of both the Nissan Cima and President, which share the same chassis. The two models needed safety upgrades to comply with the latest safety regulations, but lackluster sales showed that the company would not be able to recoup costs. As there was no platform successor to Cima/President, the Nissan Fuga became the flagship for Nissan. Starting in 2012, the Cima name was revived as a stretched Fuga, resuming the market segment formerly held by the President, thereby continuing to offer an alternative to the modern Toyota Crown Majesta premium level limousine made in Japan.


title: Nissan President

text: Since its debut in 1965, 56,000 units of the Nissan President have been sold, 63 units were sold in fiscal 2009.


title: Sanjay Kumar (soldier)

text: Subedar Major Sanjay Kumar PVC (born 3 March 1976) is a Junior Commissioned Officer in the Indian Army, and recipient of the Param Vir Chakra, India's highest military award.


title: Sanjay Kumar (soldier)

text: Sanjay Kumar was born in village Kalol Bakain in Bilaspur District of Himachal Pradesh. Prior to joining the army, he worked as a taxi driver in New Delhi. His application was rejected three times before he was finally selected to join the army.


title: Sanjay Kumar (soldier)

text: On 4 July 1999, as a member of the 13th Battalion, Jammu & Kashmir Rifles, he was the leading scout of a team tasked to capturing Area Flat Top, during the Kargil War. The area was held by Pakistani troops. Having scaled the cliff, the team was pinned down by machine gun fire from an enemy bunker, about 150 meters away.


title: Sanjay Kumar (soldier)

text: Kumar, realizing the magnitude of the problem and the detrimental effect this bunker would have in the capture of Area Flat Top, crawled alone up the ledge, along a flank, and charged towards the enemy bunker through a hail of automatic fire. Almost instantly he took two bullets in his chest and forearm that left him bleeding profusely.


title: Sanjay Kumar (soldier)

text: Though bleeding from the bullet wounds, he continued the charge towards the bunker. In hand-to-hand fighting, he killed three enemy soldiers. He then picked up an enemy machine gun and crept towards the second enemy bunker. The enemy soldiers, taken completely by surprise, were killed by him as they fled their post. Inspired by his act the rest of the platoon charged, assaulted the feature and captured Area Flat Top.


title: Sanjay Kumar (soldier)

text: In February 2022, he received the rank of Subedar Major and is posted to the National Defence Academy in Khadakwasla near Pune.


title: Sanjay Kumar (soldier)

text: During his career, he has been awarded with the Param Vir Chakra (Independence Day 1999) for his part in the Operation Vijay.


title: Sanjay Kumar (soldier)

text: In 2010 Kumar was demoted from the rank of Havildar to Lance Naik. The army refused to cite any reasons for his demotion. Moreover, the army concealed the facts and by continuing to refer to him as Havildar in press releases. Recipients of the Param-Vir Chakra are saluted irrespective of rank, which is alleged to be the bone of contention between Kumar and senior officers.


title: Sanjay Kumar (soldier)

text: Kumar was offered a job by the Himachal Pradesh Government and may accept this offer after completing his 15 years of service (for receiving post-retirement benefits) in the army.


title: Sanjay Kumar (soldier)

text: On 2 July 2014, Kumar became a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) of the Indian Army, with his promotion to Naib Subedar. While the promotion of Kumar had once become an issue in the Army after he was allegedly demoted to the rank of Lance Naik from the rank of Havildar in 2008, the issue was later buried with the intervention of higher authorities. It was also stated that there are no out-of-turn promotions for recipients of gallantry awards in the Army and they are promoted as per their seniority with their fellow soldiers in the unit.


title: Sanjay Kumar (soldier)

text: Kumar's story along with others who were part of the same conflict was portrayed in the film "LOC Kargil", in which his character was played by famous Bollywood actor Sunil Shetty.


title: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs. Lorentzen

text: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs Lorentzen (Ragnhild Alexandra; 9 June 1930 – 16 September 2012), was the eldest child of King Olav V of Norway and Princess Märtha of Sweden. She was the older sister of King Harald V and Princess Astrid. She was the first royal to have been born in Norway since the Middle Ages. In 1953 she married the industrialist Erling Lorentzen, a member of the Lorentzen family of shipping magnates. In the same year they moved to Brazil, where her husband was an industrialist and a main owner of Aracruz Celulose. She lived in Brazil until her death 59 years later.


title: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs. Lorentzen

text: Although she was the King's eldest child, she was never in the line of succession to the Norwegian throne, owing to Norway's law of agnatic succession. She was in the line of succession to the British throne, and occupied the 16th and 17th place in that succession line during her childhood and youth.


title: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs. Lorentzen

text: Princess Ragnhild was the first Norwegian princess to have been born on Norwegian soil for 629 years. She grew up at the royal residence of Skaugum near Asker, west of Oslo. She was christened in the Palace Chapel on 27 June 1930 and her godparents were: her paternal grandparents, The King and Queen of Norway; her maternal grandparents, The Duke and Duchess of Västergötland; her great uncle, The King of Sweden; her great aunt, Princess Victoria of the United Kingdom; her maternal aunt, Princess Axel of Denmark; and The Duke of York.


title: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs. Lorentzen

text: In 1940, during World War II, she and her family fled the German invasion of Norway, and she spent the wartime years in exile with her mother and siblings in Bethesda, Maryland, located northwest of Washington, D.C. Before the birth of her younger brother, it was assumed she would accede to the throne in the absence of a male heir, although this would have required a constitutional amendment, as women could not inherit the throne at the time.


title: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs. Lorentzen

text: Princess Ragnhild married Erling Lorentzen, a member of the Norwegian merchant upper-class (see Lorentzen family), in Asker on 15 May 1953. Lorentzen was a businessman and army officer who had served as her bodyguard during the War. There was great controversy at the time as she was the first member of the Norwegian Royal Family to marry non-royalty. (In Norway, there is a tradition of "official flagdays", and royal birthdays are normally listed as such occasions; however, soon after the couple's wedding, it was announced that her birthday (9 June) would cease to be such an official flagday.)


title: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs. Lorentzen

text: Following her marriage, the couple moved to Rio de Janeiro, where her husband had substantial business holdings. Their residence in Brazil there was originally temporary, but they eventually settled there, and remained in Rio until Ragnhild's death in 2012. The couple had three children.


title: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs. Lorentzen

text: Princess Ragnhild opened the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway, as her father and grandfather were attending the funeral of King George VI.


title: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs. Lorentzen

text: A conservative, Princess Ragnhild publicly criticized her niece and nephew, Princess Märtha Louise and Crown Prince Haakon Magnus, for their choice of spouses, in 2004.


title: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs. Lorentzen

text: Princess Ragnhild died of cancer at her home in Rio de Janeiro on 16 September 2012, aged 82. Her body arrived in Oslo on 24 September 2012, where her brother King Harald V and her sister Princess Astrid were present to greet her alongside her spouse Erling and their children. The funeral of Princess Ragnhild was held on 28 September 2012 in the chapel of the Royal Palace of Oslo. She was later cremated and privately interred in the church of Asker.


title: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs. Lorentzen

text: A 540 000 km area in Antarctica is named Princess Ragnhild Coast in her honour. The Jahre Line (later Color Line) cruiseferry was named in her honour.


title: Princess Ragnhild, Mrs. Lorentzen

text: She was a great-great granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and great granddaughter of Edward VII of Great Britain, thus a second cousin to Queen Elizabeth II. At the time of her birth she was 17th in the line of succession to the British throne, and 77th at the time of her death. Princess Ragnhild's maternal aunt was Queen Astrid of Belgium, which also made Princess Ragnhild a first cousin of kings Baudouin and Albert II of Belgium and of Joséphine-Charlotte of Belgium, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. Through her maternal grandmother, Princess Ingeborg of Denmark, she was also a second cousin of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Queen Anne Marie of Greece as well as a second cousin once removed of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden through her maternal grandfather Prince Carl of Sweden.


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: Sceletium tortuosum is a succulent plant commonly found in South Africa, which is also known as Kanna, Channa, Kougoed (Kauwgoed/ 'kougoed', prepared from 'fermenting' "S. tortuosum")—which literally means, 'chew(able) things' or 'something to chew'.


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: The generally recognised eight "Sceletium" species are "S. crassicaule", "S. emarcidum", "S. exalatum", "S. expansum", "S. rigidum", "S. strictum", "S. tortuosum" and "S. varians". Per Klak et al. (2007), an alternative classification for the "Sceletium" group is "Mesembryanthemum crassicaule", "M. emarcidum", "M. exalatum", "M. expansum", "M. archeri" ("S. rigidum"), "M. ladismithiense" ("S. strictum"), "M. tortuosum" and "M. varians".


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: The plant has been used by South African pastoralists and hunter-gatherers as a mood-altering substance from prehistoric times. The first known written account of the plant's use was in 1662 by Jan van Riebeeck. The traditionally prepared dried "Sceletium" was often chewed and the saliva swallowed, but it has also been made into gel caps, teas and tinctures. It has also been used as a snuff and smoked."


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: "S. tortuosum" is traditionally used to fight stress and depression, relieve pain and alleviate hunger.


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: "S. tortuosum" has been studied to alleviate excessive nocturnal barking in dogs, or meowing in cats, in pets diagnosed with dementia.


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: "S. tortuosum" may elevate mood and decrease anxiety, stress and tension. Intoxicating doses can be euphoric but not hallucinogenic, contrary to some literature on the subject.


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: "S. tortuosum" contains about 1–1.5% total alkaloids. The alkaloids contained in "S. tortuosum" believed to possess psychoactivity include mesembrine, mesembrenone, mesembrenol and tortuosamine. A standardised ethanolic extract of dried "S. tortuosum" had an IC for SERT of 4.3 μg/ml and for PDE4 inhibition of 8.5 μg/ml.


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: Mesembrine is a major alkaloid present in "S. tortuosum". There is about 0.3% mesembrine in the roots and 0.86% in the leaves, stems, and flowers of the plant. It serves as a serotonin reuptake inhibitor with less prominent inhibitory effects on phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4). In an in vitro study, a high-mesembrine "Sceletium" extract showed monoamine releasing activity by upregulation of vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2).


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: Mesembrenone on the other hand serves as a more balanced serotonin reuptake inhibitor and PDE4 inhibitor.


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: Traditional and contemporary methods of preparation serve to reduce levels of potentially harmful oxalates found in "S. tortuosum". An analysis indicated levels of 3.6-5.1% oxalate, which falls within the median range for crop plants, just like spinach or kale. It is speculated that physical crushing of the plant and the fermentation process reduce the potentially harmful effects of oxalic acid. In particular, free oxalic acid is likely to complex with cell wall-associated calcium salts and precipitate as calcium oxalate when plant material is crushed.


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: No treatment-related adverse effects were observed in an oral toxicity study in rats of a standardized hydroethanolic extract of "S. tortuosum". The extract, although not mesembrine itself, produced ataxia in rats, thereby possibly limiting the usefulness of the extract as an antidepressant.


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: C-reactive protein levels were found to increase significantly in a dose-dependent manner in unstressed control rats but not in mildly psychologically stressed rats.


title: Sceletium tortuosum

text: In a study evaluating its safety, a 2:1 standardised extract consumed by healthy adults at a dose of up to 25 mg once daily over a three-month period was well tolerated, with adverse effects such as headache not occurring more than when taking a placebo.


title: Kareem Serageldin

text: Kareem Serageldin () (born in 1973) is a former executive at Credit Suisse. He is notable for being the only banker in the United States to be sentenced to jail time as a result of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, a conviction resulting from mismarking bond prices to hide losses.


title: Kareem Serageldin

text: Serageldin was born in Cairo, Egypt to parents of modest means. He moved to the United States as a child and spent most of his childhood in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He graduated from Yale University in 1994.


title: Kareem Serageldin

text: Credit Suisse. He moved to London 4 years later to work in the bank's catastrophe bonds business. By age 33, he was named the global head of structured credit. By 2007, he was supervising 70 employees and more than $50 billion in trading positions. Despite earning approximately $7 million per year, Serageldin lived modestly; his apartment overlooking London Victoria station was described by his friends as "a grown-up dorm room".


title: Kareem Serageldin

text: By early 2008, he was fired from Credit Suisse and was reported to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York for falsifying records.


title: Kareem Serageldin

text: On February 1, 2012, Serageldin was charged by Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.


title: Kareem Serageldin

text: On April 12, 2013, Serageldin pleaded guilty to fraudulently inflating the prices of asset-backed bonds which comprised subprime residential mortgage backed securities and commercial mortgage backed securities in Credit Suisse's trading book in late 2007 and early 2008.


title: Kareem Serageldin

text: On November 22, 2013, Judge Alvin Hellerstein sentenced Serageldin to 30 months in prison. Serageldin also agreed to return $25.6 million in compensation to Credit Suisse.


title: Kareem Serageldin

text: On January 21, 2014, Serageldin was ordered to pay more than $1 million to settle the lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He was also effectively barred from the securities industry.


title: Kareem Serageldin

text: Serageldin said he committed the crime "To preserve my reputation in the bank at a time when there was great financial turmoil".


title: Space diving

text: Similar to skydiving, space diving is the act of jumping from an aircraft or spacecraft in near space and falling towards Earth. The Kármán line is a common definition as to where space begins, 100 km (62 mi) above sea level. This definition is accepted by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), which is an international standard setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics and astronautics. The United States Air Force uses 50 mi (80 km) to award astronaut wings.


title: Space diving

text: No successful space dives (above 100 km) have been completed to date. In 1959 Joseph Kittinger accomplished a jump from ; he then set a long-standing record in 1960 when he jumped from . In 1962, Yevgeni Andreyev jumped from and set a new longest-distance free fall record that was surpassed by Felix Baumgartner who made three jumps in 2012 from , , and , respectively. Alan Eustace set the current world record for highest and longest-distance free fall jump in 2014 when he jumped from . However, Joseph Kittinger still holds the record for longest-duration free fall, at 4 minutes and 36 seconds, which he accomplished during his 1960 jump from .


title: Space diving

text: Higher jumps from the mesosphere or thermosphere have yet to be successfully performed, though Orbital Outfitters, now defunct, was working to create a suit that was supposed to enable space diving. Space diving from beyond the stratosphere was first imagined in 1934, appearing in E. E. "Doc" Smith's science fiction novel "Triplanetary".


title: Space diving

text: The first stratospheric space dive was in 1959 when Colonel Joseph William Kittinger II (July 27, 1928 - December 9, 2022) in Tampa, Florida, United States a former command pilot, career military officer and retired Colonel in the United States Air Force dived from a high-altitude balloon. He participated in Project Excelsior, testing the effects on pilots of ejecting at high altitude and in 1960 set a record for the highest, longest-distance, and longest-duration skydive, from a height greater than .


title: Space diving

text: On 1 November 1962, Yevgeni Andreyev and Pyotr Dolgov ascended from Volsk, near Saratov. Andreyev jumped from the capsule at and free fell before successfully deploying his parachute. Dolgov remained in the capsule and ascended to . Dolgov was primarily testing an experimental pressure suit, and would have deployed a drogue chute like Kittinger's earlier jump. As he exited the gondola, he struck his helmet and cracked the visor, leading to depressurization and his death.


title: Space diving

text: In 1965–1966, Nick Piantanida accomplished a set of unsuccessful attempts to jump from and . During the last attempt Piantanida's face mask had depressurized. His ground controllers immediately jettisoned the balloon at close to . Piantanida barely survived the fall, and the lack of oxygen left him brain damaged and in a coma from which he never recovered.


title: Space diving

text: In the early 1990s, Kittinger played a lead role with NASA assisting British SAS Soldier Charles "Nish" Bruce to break his highest parachute jump record. The project was suspended in 1994 following Bruce's mental health breakdown.


title: Space diving

text: In 1997 parachutist and pilot Cheryl Stearns formed Stratoquest, aiming to break Kittenger's record as the first female space diver. Due either to a significant shoulder injury or funding issues for the project this plan did not come to fruition. By the time Stearns was prepared to attempt her jump, Felix Baumgartner had completed his jump and Stearns shelved her event.


title: Space diving

text: In 2012, Felix Baumgartner broke Kittinger's highest altitude and Andreyev's longest-distance free fall records, when, on October 14, he jumped from over .


title: Space diving

text: In 2014, Alan Eustace set the current world record highest and longest-distance free fall jump when he jumped from and remained in free fall for . However, Joseph Kittinger still holds the record for longest-duration free fall, at 4 minutes and 36 seconds, which he accomplished during his 1960 jump from .


title: Space diving

text: There are several technical requirements and challenges to the possibility of space jumping. These requirements would be somewhat eased when entering the atmosphere from a simple drop, where the heat of reentry would be considerably less than that of reentering from orbit. At any given density of air, the terminal velocity of a person is much lower than that of a heavy spacecraft. This is because starting from a stationary platform means that fall speed never exceeds the local terminal velocity (though this is quite high in thin atmosphere) and a small light body slows down relatively quickly as the atmosphere thickens.


title: Space diving

text: Parachutes would require increased strength to slow the higher weights associated with the added equipment.


title: Space diving

text: NASA is known to have investigated the concept in case of an emergency situation on Space Shuttle orbiters where alternative methods of reentry are not available. However, such planning has not moved beyond the conceptual stage given the high energies involved in reentry from orbital speeds.


title: Nickel titanium

text: Nickel titanium, also known as Nitinol, is a metal alloy of nickel and titanium, where the two elements are present in roughly equal atomic percentages. Different alloys are named according to the weight percentage of nickel; e.g., Nitinol 55 and Nitinol 60. It exhibits the shape memory effect and superelasticity at different temperatures. It has an ability to go back to the form it had before exposed to heat over 75°C


title: Nickel titanium

text: Nitinol alloys exhibit two closely related and unique properties: the shape memory effect and superelasticity (also called pseudoelasticity). Shape memory is the ability of Nitinol to undergo deformation at one temperature, stay in its deformed shape when the external force is removed, then recover its original, undeformed shape upon heating above its "transformation temperature". Superelasticity is the ability for the metal to undergo large deformations and immediately return to its undeformed shape upon removal of the external load. Nitinol can deform 10–30 times as much as ordinary metals and return to its original shape. Whether Nitinol behaves with the shape memory effect or superelasticity depends on whether it is above the transformation temperature of the specific alloy. Below the transformation temperature it exhibits the shape memory effect, and above that temperature it behaves superelastically.


title: Nickel titanium

text: The word Nitinol is derived from its composition and its place of discovery: ("Ni"ckel "Ti"tanium-"N"aval "O"rdnance "L"aboratory). William J. Buehler along with Frederick Wang, discovered its properties during research at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in 1959. Buehler was attempting to make a better missile nose cone, which could resist fatigue, heat and the force of impact. Having found that a 1:1 alloy of nickel and titanium could do the job, in 1961 he presented a sample at a laboratory management meeting. The sample, folded up like an accordion, was passed around and flexed by the participants. One of them applied heat from his pipe lighter to the sample and, to everyone's surprise, the accordion-shaped strip contracted and took its previous shape.


title: Nickel titanium

text: While the potential applications for nitinol were realized immediately, practical efforts to commercialize the alloy did not take place until a decade later. This delay was largely because of the extraordinary difficulty of melting, processing and machining the alloy. Even these efforts encountered financial challenges that were not readily overcome until the 1980s, when these practical difficulties finally began to be resolved.


title: Nickel titanium

text: The discovery of the shape-memory effect in general dates back to 1932, when Swedish chemist Arne Ölander first observed the property in gold–cadmium alloys. The same effect was observed in Cu-Zn (brass) in the early 1950s.


title: Nickel titanium

text: Nitinol's unusual properties are derived from a reversible solid-state phase transformation known as a martensitic transformation, between two different martensite crystal phases, requiring of mechanical stress.


title: Nickel titanium

text: At high temperatures, nitinol assumes an interpenetrating simple cubic structure referred to as austenite (also known as the parent phase). At low temperatures, nitinol spontaneously transforms to a more complicated monoclinic crystal structure known as martensite (daughter phase). There are four transition temperatures associated to the austenite-to-martensite and martensite-to-austenite transformations. Starting from full austenite, martensite begins to form as the alloy is cooled to the so-called "martensite start temperature", or M, and the temperature at which the transformation is complete is called the "martensite finish temperature", or M. When the alloy is fully martensite and is subjected to heating, austenite starts to form at the "austenite start temperature", A, and finishes at the "austenite finish temperature", A.


title: Nickel titanium

text: The cooling/heating cycle shows thermal hysteresis. The hysteresis width depends on the precise nitinol composition and processing. Its typical value is a temperature range spanning about 20–50 K (20–50 °C; 36–90 °F) but it can be reduced or amplified by alloying and processing.


title: Nickel titanium

text: Crucial to nitinol properties are two key aspects of this phase transformation. First is that the transformation is "reversible", meaning that heating above the transformation temperature will revert the crystal structure to the simpler austenite phase. The second key point is that the transformation in both directions is instantaneous.


title: Nickel titanium

text: Martensite's crystal structure (known as a monoclinic, or B19' structure) has the unique ability to undergo limited deformation in some ways without breaking atomic bonds. This type of deformation is known as twinning, which consists of the rearrangement of atomic planes without causing slip, or permanent deformation. It is able to undergo about 6–8% strain in this manner. When martensite is reverted to austenite by heating, the original austenitic structure is restored, regardless of whether the martensite phase was deformed. Thus the name "shape memory" refers to the fact that the shape of the high temperature austenite phase is "remembered," even though the alloy is severely deformed at a lower temperature.


title: Nickel titanium

text: A great deal of pressure can be produced by preventing the reversion of deformed martensite to austenite—from to, in many cases, more than . One of the reasons that nitinol works so hard to return to its original shape is that it is not just an ordinary metal alloy, but what is known as an intermetallic compound. In an ordinary alloy, the constituents are randomly positioned in the crystal lattice; in an ordered intermetallic compound, the atoms (in this case, nickel and titanium) have very specific locations in the lattice. The fact that nitinol is an intermetallic is largely responsible for the complexity in fabricating devices made from the alloy.


title: Nickel titanium

text: The scenario described above (cooling austenite to form martensite, deforming the martensite, then heating to revert to austenite, thus returning the original, undeformed shape) is known as the thermal shape memory effect. To fix the original "parent shape," the alloy must be held in position and heated to about . This process is usually called "shape setting". A second effect, called superelasticity or pseudoelasticity, is also observed in nitinol. This effect is the direct result of the fact that martensite can be formed by applying a stress as well as by cooling. Thus in a certain temperature range, one can apply a stress to austenite, causing martensite to form while at the same time changing shape. In this case, as soon as the stress is removed, the nitinol will spontaneously return to its original shape. In this mode of use, nitinol behaves like a super spring, possessing an elastic range 10–30 times greater than that of a normal spring material. There are, however, constraints: the effect is only observed about 273–313 K (0–40 °C; 32–104 °F) above the A temperature. This upper limit is referred to as M, which corresponds to the highest temperature in which it is still possible to stress-induce the formation of martensite. Below M, martensite formation under load allows superelasticity due to twinning. Above M, since martensite is no longer formed, the only response to stress is slip of the austenitic microstructure, and thus permanent deformation.


title: Nickel titanium

text: Nitinol is typically composed of approximately 50 to 51% nickel by atomic percent (55 to 56% weight percent). Making small changes in the composition can change the transition temperature of the alloy significantly. Transformation temperatures in nitinol can be controlled to some extent, where A temperature ranges from about −20 °C to +110 °C. Thus, it is common practice to refer to a nitinol formulation as "superelastic" or "austenitic" if A is lower than a reference temperature, while as "shape memory" or "martensitic" if higher. The reference temperature is usually defined as the room temperature or the human body temperature (37 °C; 98 °F).


title: Nickel titanium

text: One often-encountered effect regarding nitinol is the so-called R-phase. The R-phase is another martensitic phase that competes with the martensite phase mentioned above. Because it does not offer the large memory effects of the martensite phase, it is usually of non practical use.


title: Nickel titanium

text: Nitinol is exceedingly difficult to make, due to the exceptionally tight compositional control required, and the tremendous reactivity of titanium. Every atom of titanium that combines with oxygen or carbon is an atom that is robbed from the NiTi lattice, thus shifting the composition and making the transformation temperature that much lower. There are two primary melting methods used today:


title: Nickel titanium

text: While both methods have advantages, it has been demonstrated that an industrial state-of-the-art VIM melted material has smaller inclusions than an industrial state-of-the-art VAR one, leading to a higher fatigue resistance. Other research report that VAR employing extreme high-purity raw materials may lead to a reduced number of inclusions and thus to an improved fatigue behavior. Other methods are also used on a boutique scale, including plasma arc melting, induction skull melting, and e-beam melting. Physical vapour deposition is also used on a laboratory scale.


title: Nickel titanium

text: Heat treating nitinol is delicate and critical. It is a knowledge intensive process to fine-tune the transformation temperatures. Aging time and temperature controls the precipitation of various Ni-rich phases, and thus controls how much nickel resides in the NiTi lattice; by depleting the matrix of nickel, aging increases the transformation temperature. The combination of heat treatment and cold working is essential in controlling the properties of nitinol products.


title: Nickel titanium

text: Fatigue failures of nitinol devices are a constant subject of discussion. Because it is the material of choice for applications requiring enormous flexibility and motion (e.g., peripheral stents, heart valves, smart thermomechanical actuators and electromechanical microactuators), it is necessarily exposed to much greater fatigue strains compared to other metals. While the strain-controlled fatigue performance of nitinol is superior to all other known metals, fatigue failures have been observed in the most demanding applications. There is a great deal of effort underway trying to better understand and define the durability limits of nitinol.


title: Nickel titanium

text: Nitinol is half nickel, and thus there has been a great deal of concern in the medical industry regarding the release of nickel, a known allergen and possible carcinogen. (Nickel is also present in substantial amounts in stainless steel and cobalt-chrome alloys.) When properly treated (via electropolishing and/or passivation), nitinol forms a very stable protective TiO layer that acts as a very effective and self-healing barrier against ion exchange. It has been repeatedly shown that nitinol releases nickel at a slower pace than stainless steel, for example. With that said, very early medical devices were made without electropolishing, and corrosion was observed. Today's nitinol vascular self-expandable metallic stents, for example, show no evidence of corrosion or nickel release, and the outcomes in patients with and without nickel allergies are indistinguishable.


title: Nickel titanium

text: There are constant and long-running discussions regarding inclusions in nitinol, both TiC and TiNiO. As in all other metals and alloys, inclusions can be found in Nitinol. The size, distribution and type of inclusions can be controlled to some extent. Theoretically, smaller, rounder and few inclusions should lead to increased fatigue durability. In literature, some early works report to have failed to show measurable differences, while novel studies demonstrate a dependence of fatigue resistance on the typical inclusion size in an alloy.


title: Nickel titanium

text: Nitinol is difficult to weld, both to itself and other materials. Laser welding nitinol to itself is a relatively routine process. More recently, strong joints between NiTi wires and stainless steel wires have been made using nickel filler. Laser and tungsten inert gas (TIG) welds have been made between NiTi tubes and stainless steel tubes . More research is ongoing into other processes and other metals to which nitinol can be welded.