Summary
Les Grands Magasins Cicurel et Oreco, the Cairo department store chain of the Jewish Cicurel family — “Egypt’s largest and most fashionable department store chain” — whose trajectory from approved “national store” in 1921–22 to sequestration in 1956 The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry uses to illustrate the transformation of the whole Egyptian Jewish community “from a national asset into a fifth column” (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 223-233, 575-612). The firm’s name is spelled “Les Grands Magasins” in the Introduction and “Les Grand Magasins” in Chapter 2, as printed in each place.
Details
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Moreno Cicurel migrated to Cairo from Izmir in the mid-nineteenth century, when both cities were part of the Ottoman Empire; the family held Italian citizenship at the time. After working for several years in a Jewish-owned haberdashery shop in the Muski and then purchasing it, he opened a large department store in 1909 on what is now 26th of July Street, in the heart of Cairo’s European section (Chapter 2, note 60). The firm operated midway between the fully integrated business activity of the Qattawi circle and an “ethnic economy” model (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 575-612).
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His second son Yusuf Cicurel Bey (b. Cairo 1887) was a member of the Cairo Chamber of Commerce and one of the ten original members of the board of directors of Bank Misr in 1920 — by which time the family must have acquired Egyptian citizenship — and participated in several Bank Misr ventures in the 1920s. His youngest son Salvator, educated in Switzerland, worked for the firm from 1912, became its managing director and chairman, joined the Executive Committee of the Egyptian Chamber of Commerce in 1925, served on the Supreme Council of Labor at the request of non-Wafd governments, went on an economic mission to the Sudan, and was a patron of sports: national fencing champion and captain of the 1928 Olympic fencing team, receiving the title of bey in 1937 (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 575-612).
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Salvator was also a leader of the Jewish community — on the Cairo Sephardi Jewish Community Council in 1927–28 and from 1939 to 1946, a founding member of the Friends of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1934 (probably a philanthropic activity, since he “does not appear to have been a political Zionist, though he was less adamant in his opposition to Zionism than René Qattawi,” Chapter 2, note 61) — and succeeded René Qattawi as president of Cairo’s Sephardi Jewish community from 1946 to 1957 (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 575-612).
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The stores specialized in ready-to-wear clothing, shoes, housewares and notions, much of it imported from Europe, had a reputation for high quality, and were a purveyor to the royal palace under Kings Fu’ad and Faruq; the Oreco branch consisted of thrift stores serving the lower middle classes. The firm had a foreign cultural character — a largely noncitizen Jewish staff, exclusive imported merchandise, French used on the shop floor — yet the family regarded themselves as Egyptians, and the ambience they promoted was considered “completely compatible with nationalist ideals and aspirations as they were commonly understood until the mid-1950s” (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 575-612).
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In the Wafd’s 1921–22 boycott protesting Sa’d Zaghlul’s rearrest and deportation to the Seychelles, Egyptians were called on to purchase only at “national stores,” and the Cicurel store near Cairo’s Opera Square “was specified as an approved shop” (Introduction, note 36: Eric Davis, Challenging Colonialism, 1983, p. 116). In a 1948 memorandum to the Ministry of Commerce the firm described itself as “one of the pillars of our [Egyptian national] economic independence” (Introduction, note 37) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 223-233).
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Because it was favored by the royal family, the firm was not placed under government administration during the 1948 war, unlike the other major Jewish-owned department stores; the main Cairo store was damaged by a bomb on July 19, 1948, “most likely the work of the Muslim Brothers,” but soon reopened. The building was destroyed in the Cairo fire of January 26, 1952, and “rapidly rebuilt with the support of General Muhammad Naguib after the military coup of July 23, 1952.” By 1954–55 the two non-Cicurel family members had left the board and were not replaced; at the outbreak of the Suez/Sinai War, unlike in 1948, the firm was placed under sequestration; the store quickly reopened, but the family soon ceded its majority holding to a new group headed by Muslim Egyptians, and in 1957 Salvator Cicurel left Egypt for France. The Introduction’s summary: “Between 1919 and 1956, the entire Egyptian Jewish community, like the Cicurel firm, was transformed from a national asset into a fifth column” (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 223-233, 575-612).
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In Chapter 3, the Cicurel and Oreco stores on Fu’ad al-Awwal (now 26th of July) Street were bombed on July 19, 1948, in the tense atmosphere after the Israeli bombing of Cairo on July 15 and a phantom second raid on July 17, followed by the bombings of the Adès and Gattegno stores (Chapter 3, note 24) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1189-1190).
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Salvator Cicurel, as president of the Cairo Jewish community, joined Alexandria president Edwin Goar in appealing to the governor of the National Bank of Egypt to reinstitute the closing of the bank on the Jewish high holidays, discontinued during the 1948 war (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1253-1255).
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Salvator Cicurel was among those who left Egypt in the post-1956 wave, after the Suez/Sinai War measures that sequestered some 460 Jewish-owned businesses (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1325-1329).
Related pages
The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, Yusuf ‘Aslan Qattawi, Mutamassirun