In a series of five long articles which appeared in "l'Ardennais" in 1994, Bertrand Mathieu, respected translator of Rimbaud and the "most Ardennais of Americans", speaks of his search for the Jewish related past of his neighborhood of quai Rimbaud.
The personal uppertice of Emile Baudson and of René Robinet attest to the truthfulness of these chapters of a long story :
the privelege vouchsafed by Charles of Gonzague which permitted the Jews to live in accord with their faith, the cordial relations between municipalities and rabbis (carried out by the construction of a synagogue - in the present day rue Hypolitte-Taine), the period of resistance to arbitrariness which pretended to be imposing French versions of names, the disappearance of the synagogue in 1940.
Like a poetic leitmotif, bertrand Mathieu strikes out at each of these episodes : "I found out that..."

Bertrand Mathieu likes to find out! A praiseworthy curiosity for us inhabitants of Charleville since it brought us an authentic inquiry and some conclusions : "the synagogue of Charleville really existed."
Our city, like Sedan with regard to the Protestants and the Catholics, has known (with all its up and downs) the riches of a period of tolerance and of religious and cultural exchange.
Many mysteries remain, though. Why and how was the synagogue destroyed ? What unknown traces do we retain today of the Jewish-related past of this neighborhood ?
In memory of the great American poet Walt Whitman, Bertrand Mathieu evokes a radiant flowering of "lilacs of memory", symbols of resurrection, at the site of the old synagogue.