During World War II, thousands of Jews fled to the island of Corsica from mainland France. The local Gentiles, famously tight-lipped, refused to hand them over the Vichy authorities. More recently, a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary has set up a synagogue in the capital city of Ajaccio. Shmuel Loebenstein describes the island’s Jewish history:
No one knows exactly when the story of Jewish Corsica began. One theory suggests that Pasquale Paoli, [who led Corsica in winning its independence in] 1729, persuaded Jews from Livorno to migrate there to aid in the island’s economic development. Sadly, that initial cohort assimilated, and no descendants are counted among the Jewish community today. Some of Corsica’s most prominent family names, such as Simeoni and Gabrielli [are thought to] bear the legacy of those early settlers.
The next influx of Jews came from Tiberias in the early 20th century. Their safety had become imperiled when the region, then under Ottoman rule, was plunged into the chaos of World War I. The French allowed 800 of them to flee to Corsica and start new lives on the other side of the Mediterranean. They set up shop in Bastia, the port city in Corsica’s north . . . [and] built the Beth Meir Synagogue, which continues to function; the nucleus of today’s Jewish establishment are descendants of those Tiberias refugees. . . .
Many of [of Ajaccio’s Jews nowadays] are former residents of France proper, anxious to set up their home on this Mediterranean paradise while still enjoying the benefits of French citizenship. There is a feeling that Corsica has remained free of the tensions that have gripped Jews on the mainland in recent times, and that it will welcome and protect Jews as it did in the 1940s.
Read more on Chabad.org: http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/3447683/jewish/Corsica-Birthplace-of-Bonaparte-Says-Bonjour-to-First-Permanent-Chabad-House.htm