From the Canadian Jewish Review, September 8, 1922
It will be remembered that Sarah Bernhardt was born in Paris in 1844 of Dutch Jewish parents and was received into the Roman Catholic Church at the request of her father. She has recently given an interview to Miss Elsie Roow, of the New York Herald, in which she said:
“On the threshold of my eightieth year, I am impelled to review my feelings. I now believe that I have given the French people more than I was entitled to give, and to the Jewish people much less than it had the right to demand of me. I gave my soul to French art.
“What I did, others could also do for the French people. But there is a people for which I alone could have done something and I have failed to do it. I refer to the Jewish people, who are my people. To them the product of my mind has always belonged and I have given it to the French.
“Thus I must review my position. I cannot die confessing I have loved the whole world but my own people I have not loved! I know not how long I have got to live, but I have still time to waken an old love to new life. I should again like to love the Jewish people as I did as a child, and to work for its welfare as I worked for myself and for French art. I go to America and shall devote the results of my journey to the Jewish Home.” ♦
