Past, present. History and its lessons for today. On the occasion of the commemorations of the 80the On the anniversary of the Vél’ d’Hiv’ gathering, the President of the Republic and his Prime Minister split roles to issue a stark warning against the rise of anti-Semitism in the country.
Elizabeth Bourne recalled this dramatic episode in World War II, when 9,000 French officials, at the request of the Germans, arrested and handed over 13,000 Jews, including 4,115 children, to the Nazis. ” It is our laws, it is our police that arrested thousands of families, it is our country that allowed them to drown here. On the 15th, the Prime Minister reminded at the place of the former expresswaye district in Paris. An extension of the speech delivered by Jacques Chirac in 1995, when the President of the Republic first recognized the responsibility of the French state at the gathering.
A warning, even a warning, to Emmanuel Macron about the rise of anti-Semitism in the country. ” Eighty years after this eclipse of humanity, it is still as urgent, perhaps more so than ever, to scrutinize the hate in our past in order to better examine it in our present. “, the head of state explained from the station of Pitivier, from where the Jewish deportees left for the concentration camps. A site now turned into a museum by the Shoah Memorial. A place from where the president of the republic called “republican forces of our country “for them to repeat”vigilance“.
“The mechanics of 1940 came from afar and were fed by hatred, commonplace anti-Semitism, approximations.recalled Emmanuel Macron, who sees that the same mechanism is working today.We have not ended anti-Semitism. And we must make a clear observation. this anti-Semitism is more burning, creepier than in 1995 (…) It can get other faces, wrap itself in other ways, with other caricatures. But “odious anti-Semitism,” as Zola put it, is there. Flying, still alive. Persists, persists, returns. A climate that insidiously penetrates the earth.
Between terrorist and criminal attacks fueled by anti-Semitism, between the controversies surrounding certain so-called humorists promoting anti-Semitism (…) there are reasons to say that what happened on July 16 and 17, 1942 and the conclusion: extracted from it by Jacques Chirac once again imposes itself on us
Executive Advisor
“Alas, French society is not done with anti-Semitism notes the executive advisor.Between terrorist and criminal attacks fueled by anti-Semitism, between the controversies surrounding certain so-called humorists promoting anti-Semitism (…) there are reasons to say that what happened on July 16 and 17, 1942 and the conclusion: extracted from it by Jacques Chirac once again imposes itself on us. At that time, the president of the republic had already issued a warning against trivializing anti-Semitism. “In this matter, nothing is insignificant, nothing is reasonable, nothing is indivisible. Racist crimes, defense of revisionist theses, provocations of all kinds – small remarks, kind words – from the same sources Jacques Chirac warned in particular. Hence the anti-Semitism that some drink even within the political class.
“Never give up”
Last month, a notorious anti-Semitic mural painted on a building in Avignon was removed at the request of the prefecture, while the city’s socialist mayor found nothing wrong with it. Just like the elected officials of La France insoumise, who were further distinguished on Sunday by a tweet from the president of the National Assembly insoumise group. The same Matilda Panot who called the Prime Minister.survivor ignoring or pretending to ignore that Elizabeth Born’s father, the resistance fighter Joseph Bornstein, was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, survived there, but ended his life in 1972.the complacency of certain political forces related to anti-Semitism. But not only.
Because especially during the last presidential campaign, a key moment in the life of the country, anti-Semitism appeared. In particular, when the former polemicist and “Reconquest!” candidate Eric Zemmur defended the thesis according to which Marshal Pétain saved the Jews during the Second World War. “Neither Pétain, nor Laval, nor Bousquet, nor Darquier de Pelepois, none of them wanted to save the Jews. To say so is to falsify history– answered Emmanuel Macron, not mentioning him, but targeting him.television commentator“and condemning”those who confuse anti-Semitism with free speech“. Hence, a cry of alarm, but also a warning for the next slip-up and a promise from Emmanuel Macron:Never give anything away. Oppress and punish. To remind and educate.»
Source: Le Figaro
