Jacques Lazarus was the principal advocate for the Jews of Algeria after 1948, and especially during the Algerian War (1954–1962). He was born on September 2, 1916 to Alsatian Jewish parents then living in Payerne, Switzerland, but after World War I his family moved to Colmar, which had become French once again. In pursuit of a military career, Lazarus joined the French Army in the 1930s and served until the 1940 armistice with Germany and the establishment of the Vichy regime, when he was discharged from the army under the Jewish Statute. In 1943 he became a leader of the clandestine Armée Jui…