Last update - 21:41 19/02/2008
ANALYSIS: Sarkozy's Holocaust education plan baffles Jews
By Daniel Ben-Simon, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: CRIF, France, Holocaust
A week after Nicolas Sarkozy launched his revolutionary proposal to reform Holocaust education, France is still in turmoil. The president has gotten more and more deeply embroiled in a raucous political debate, which has spread to right-wing as well as left-wing parties and social movements.
But the controversy is most markedly felt in the Jewish community, which is in disarray over the contentious preoccupation with the Holocaust heritage.
It actually started on a good note. For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic the president himself attended last week's annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF). Sarkozy's predecessors, although generally supportive of the Jewish community, thought attending the event in person might be perceived as encouraging sectarianism.
To much applause, Sarkozy spoke highly of his country's renewed honeymoon with Israel. Toward the end of his keynote speech, he said he intends to raise the profile of the memory of the Holocaust, by having 11-year-old schoolchildren 'adopt' a Jewish child of the same age who perished in the Holocaust.
During the Nazi occupation, several hundred French Jewish children were transported to concentration camps and murdered.
"Nothing is more exciting for a child," the president said, "than the story of a child of the same age, who played the same games and had the same dreams, but was unfortunate enough to be born Jewish in the 1940s."
The guests were overwhelmed with excitement and gave him a standing ovation. One woman, sitting at the president's table, remained seated. Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor and a former right-wing minister, could not believe her ears.
Later that night, she expressed her amazement at the president's proposal. "It is inconceivable and unfair," Veil, the chairwoman of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah in France, told reporters. "We can't do this to a 10-year-old. It's impossible to ask a child of that age to relate to a dead person. It would be unbearable for them."
The next day, Sarkozy's idea was extensively debated in the media and in political circles. He was continuously accused of traumatizing innocent children. The chairman of the Socialist Party suggested scrapping the proposal and holding a thorough debate in the National Assembly and among teachers and headmasters to study its prospective impact on young children.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right, was fuming. Having referred in the past to the gas chambers as a footnote in the Second World War, he said that the proposal is morally abhorrent and psychologically criminal.
"The poor children will feel guilty and break down," he added.
The controversy around the memory of the Holocaust seems to have embarrassed the country's Jewish organizations. They said that they find the presence of such a sensitive subject in the media spotlight very difficult. Some of them have said, off the record, that the president should have consulted more people before making a decision.
Sarkozy has been toying with this idea for a few years. As interior minister under Jacques Chirac he was astonished by the number of anti-Semitic incidents. He told his associates at the time that he believes the best way to combat racism is education. Shortly after his election as president, he asked his interior minister to promote a Holocaust education program based on personal stories of young victims.
The Elysee Palace was taken aback by the media noise the president's remarks instigated. His chief of staff said that they will shortly be reviewing ways to implement the proposal. "The president is determined to put his proposal into practice, but is also open to suggestions."
Commentators have said that if Sarkozy's approval ratings had not been so low, his proposal would have met a much wider support.
"In the miserable state he's in," wrote a Le Figaro columnist, "why wonder he's attracting fire wherever he goes?"
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/955859.html
