A French politician refuses to remain silent in the face of anti-Semitism

For Ms. Braun-Pivet, like many French people, religion is a matter of tradition and heritage and not of faithful devotion. Her husband, Vianney Pivet, is a devout Catholic, and they celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah with their five children.

However, the family history of her paternal grandparents’ arrival in France, their survival during the Holocaust and the successful lives they subsequently built in their new country is a pillar of her identity.

Her grandparents, Kalmann and Rosa Braun, cared for her and her older brother during the many French school holidays. Their stories, she said, “irrigated our childhood immensely.”

Rosa was a Jew from Munich, whose family fled Germany when the Nazis took power in 1933. Kalmann was a Jew from Poland who visited and stayed in France on a tourist visa. They met and married in France.

At the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the French Foreign Legion. After France surrendered in 1940, the couple tried to settle down in the countryside, where he would offer tailoring services in exchange for food, eventually finding shelter in the Alps. There, Kalmann joined the resistance and Rosa was hidden for two years by a family on their farm, where she gave birth to Mrs. Braun-Pivet’s father.

After the war, Kalmann used his Resistance Medal to apply for French citizenship for all three.

Many French people felt betrayed by the Vichy regime, which had collaborated with the Nazis and helped send more than 74,000 Jews to their deaths in concentration camps. But Ms. Braun-Pivet says her grandparents were among those who felt saved by their new country.

“They conveyed their deep-seated love for France, the country that had welcomed them, protected them and fought for them,” she said last year during her inauguration speech as president of the National Assembly.