French Jewry, during the period after World War I, was enhanced by immigration from the former Ottoman countries. The Jews from Turkey and Greece settled chiefly in Paris and in the large cities of the south. However, the largest immigration came from Eastern Europe in the wake of the Ukrainian and Polish pogroms. Romania also provided a significant number of Jews. Once again the Russian and Lithuanian elements were not numerous. This trend increased after 1924 following the prohibition of free immigration into the United States. From 1933 many Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany passed through France en route for America or Palestine. The number remaining in France was relatively insignificant. It is estimated that there were 180,000 Jews resident in Paris in 1939, one-third of them belonging to the old French Jewish community. By then the use of Yiddish had become widespread and the "Ashkenazation" of the community had increased. The freedom of religious organization, which the law separating church and state had ratified by abolishing the official organization of religion, had enabled the different groups of immigrants to organize an appropriate framework for their religious and social life. Thus in 1923 the Fédération des Sociétés Juives de France (FSJF), a body which united the majority of Landsmanschaften, was created. However, these organizations did not impair the prestige of the old-established French Jewish communal bodies. The new bodies lost much of their meaningfulness as their members assimilated into French life, and with the progress of social security which deprived them of much of their usefulness. Many of their members subsequently joined the ranks of the established community.