A documentary entitled “Ady Steg, a Jewish journey, a French story”, directed by Isabelle Wekstein, is broadcast on Sunday at 10:40 p.m. on France 2.
“He was a ‘mensch’ [une personne intègre et de confiance, en yiddish]. It is the first of the virtues that we can expect from a man.” This is how the lawyer and former minister Robert Badinter described Ady Steg. Of Jewish faith, this eminent surgeon, associate professor of medicine, who operated on General de Gaulle and François Mitterrand, left a lasting mark, through his involvement, both on the hospital world and on the Jewish institutions of France. However, he remains little known to the general public. An injustice that is repaired by the documentary dedicated to him, entitled Ady Steg, a Jewish journey, a French story, directed by Isabelle Wekstein and broadcast Sunday January 14 on France 2.
If the film traces the past of Ady Steg, born in 1925 in Czechoslovakia and arrived in Paris at the age of 7 with his family in order to flee the pogroms in Eastern Europe, it mainly focuses on the commitment of this great doctor and his profound humanism. A convinced activist, Ady Steg has never stopped caring for the suffering of men, but also that of the Jewish community by preserving the rights and memory of Jews of France. He was, in turn, president of Crif, the Union of Jewish Students of France and the Universal Israelite Alliance. The documentary also highlights his unwavering loyalty to France, the country whose culture he passionately embraced. Director Isabelle Wekstein returns for franceinfo on the journey of this distinguished and committed doctor.
Franceinfo: Why paint a portrait of Ady Steg?
Isabelle Wekstein: Because I had the chance to be around him for a little over thirty years. I am his daughter-in-law and, as such, I was able to film our interviews for a year starting in 2011 with David Teboul. It was not to make a documentary, but rather to create family archives. Ady Steg was known in the Jewish community because he directed various institutions, and in the medical community because he directed a urology department, created emergency medicine and operated on the General de Gaulle and François Mitterrand.
But deep down, he especially wanted to talk about his native shtetl [village ou quartier juif en Europe de l’Est] and his childhood in an Orthodox Jewish family. As it was less well known, I found it important to talk about his personal history and his journey through the century. He was involved in many causes, but as a particularly modest man, he never put himself forward. Perhaps he could have been better known to the general public, but that was not in his nature. I found it essential to make it known. He died in April 2021, in the middle of Covid. The following year, the various Jewish institutions for which he had worked felt that he had not received the tribute he deserved. They came to me and that’s where the idea of making a documentary was born.
What is striking in your film is his love and loyalty for France, despite the disillusionment he will experience with the Second World War…
“It’s a paradox”, as advertising executive Maurice Lévy nicely says in the film. Ady was a much more complex being than one might think. He was a man deeply attached to his Jewish identity, to Jewish transmission and education. However, he considered that he was French, that he owed a lot to France, and that excellence in his educational and professional career was linked to the French system. As he was a profoundly good and humanist man, he saw no difficulty in having this double loyalty: one to his origins, to the Jewish people, and the other to France which, despite everything, had welcomed him, integrated, even if it suffered from the Collaboration, the Vichy regime and the rise of anti-Semitism after the war. He explains it very well during his hearing before the commission for the adoption of the Nationality Code, which we discover in the film and which had a great response at the time. He had this nice phrase about it: “ France is my cultural home, Judaism, my spiritual home.”
Did he speak easily about his relationships with François Mitterrand and General de Gaulle, which he operated?
He said little about François Mitterrand, because he was his doctor and he was a man who kept absolute professional secrecy. He operated on him for his prostate problems in 1992 and then in 1994. It was also during that year that the ties of friendship which united the French president with René Bousquet, the former secretary general of the Vichy police, assassinated in 1993. Even if he initially denied it, François Mitterrrand would eventually admit to having recommended slowing down legal proceedings, including those against René Bousquet, to avoid “revive wounds”. This was a real breaking point for Ady Steg, who was particularly affected by it. In an interview, he confided being “banned and bruised”. A statement that will not please the French president. Following this, they will both distance themselves.
Regarding General de Gaulle, I learned about their intimate exchanges while making the film. I know that during the surgery he performed on him in 1964, Ady’s role was very important. They subsequently maintained courteous relations, even if Ady was undoubtedly hurt by the general’s words at the time of the Six-Day War in June 1967. At the time, he uttered the sentence about “the Jews, until then dispersed, but who had remained what they had always been, that is to say an elite people, sure of themselves and dominating”.
He was very involved in helping the Jewish community…
He actually invested a lot in the reconstruction of the community, as we can see through the different functions he held, but if he was very faithful to his Judaism, it was an open and humanist Judaism. Ady was also heavily involved in Jewish-Christian relations. There are a lot of things that I unfortunately didn’t put in the film, because it’s 52 minutes, but he was very close to Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger. He also played a fundamental role at the time of Carmel d’Auschwitz [Durant neuf ans, de 1984 à 1993, des carmélites se sont installées dans les anciens locaux du théâtre d’Auschwitz, ce qui provoqua la stupeur et la condamnation des communautés religieuses catholiques et juives]. Ady Steg met the Pope and was very present in Jewish-Muslim friendships. He helped Hassan II, the king of Morocco, to have a very open vision of Judaism and Moroccan Jews, living in Morocco or abroad. Ady Steg was in a great spirit of dialogue between Jews and Muslims.
He was also a member of the Halde (High Authority for the Fight against Discrimination and for equality). Concerned about memory, of transmission and education, icreated a large library at the Universal Israelite Alliance and was very invested in school networks of the Alliance. Ady had an open mind on subjects that were not only linked to the Jewish community.
What was his contribution to medicine?
One of his important contributions is the seminal reports he wrote on emergencies. Ady Steg considered that they needed to be restructured. He therefore advocated for emergency medicine and thus contributed very significantly to the fact that emergency becomes a specialty in its own right. Previously, emergencies were handled by young interns, changing every day and specializing in other areas. He created a real emergency sector, certainly not alone but his action resulted in the creation of permanent positions of professors, seniors specialized in emergencies. He was able to ensure that there was a “universitization” and “seniorization” of emergencies. He was also appointed president of the National Emergency Restructuring Commission.
Head of the urology department at Cochin hospital in Paris, Ady Steg has made significant scientific contributions. The Cochin Urological School which he headed was recognized worldwide. He was one of the promoters of the treatment of bladder cancer with BCG and worked to develop the treatment of prostate cancer. He also held responsibilities in learned urology societies. Ady Steg truly had a great career as a surgeon and researcher, but he was also an exceptional teacher. All of his students fought to attend his classes and his day and internship lectures. They looked to Ady Steg as both an example and a guide.
The documentary Ady Steg, a Jewish journey, a French story, directed by Isabelle Wekstein, is broadcast on Sunday January 14 at 10:40 p.m. on France 2 and on the france.tv platform.