After three decades of memorial trips to the Polish extermination camp of Auschwitz, at the initiation of the Rhône department, a pioneer in France in this field since 1995, the Metropolis of Lyon decided at the start of 2023 to take of 240 college students in Alsace. On the program of the school trip organized over two days, a visit to the Struthof camp before an immersion in the heart of the European institutions district in Strasbourg.
Read also on Tribune de Lyon: “To be killed in this way is very sad”: with the Lyon college students in the Struthof concentration camp
The opportunity for Jean Lévy, regional delegate of the Association of sons and daughters of Jewish deportees from France, to recontextualize what has now become an essential moment of the school year. ” This had aroused some opposition at the timehe recalls. Some parents thought 14 was too young. »
antidote trip
Today, the age debate has moved to the choice of the site chosen to transmit this memory. “Parents called us to tell us that they objected to their child going to Auschwitz “because of the proximity of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, indicates Didier Bolmont, director of Education at the Métropole de Lyon.
The decision was therefore taken in January 2023: the Lyon college students would rather visit the Struthof camp, in Natzweiler, then the European Parliament in Strasbourg. But the change of decor and context was accompanied by an adaptation and a renewal of the message. The vocation of travel remains the inoculation of the ideas of living together, of respect and tolerance as an antidote to the pure and simple denial of humanity by millions of men, women and children, so that the horrors never from XXe century do not recur.
But implicitly, it is also the relationship to citizenship of these college students with very diverse socio-economic profiles – from the Chevreul-Sala private college in the Presqu’île to the REP+ Henri Longchambon college in Mermoz via the Segpa class at André college Lassagne de Caluire-et-Cuire – who is questioned. In what way is the story of the deportees from Struthof the story of the well-born French children of Champagne-au-Mont-d’Or, but also that of the allophone pupils of Vaulx-en-Velin, as heirs of the same memory and citizens of the same country.
“From Nazi Germany to Reconciliation”
If Auschwitz is the highest place of memory of the crime of crimes, ” it should not be compared with Natzweiler “, warns Véronique Moreira, environmental vice-president of the Metropolis for Education, colleges and memory. ” In terms of emotion and horror, no need to go to Poland “, adds Jean-Baptiste Bolvin, member of the direction of education.
However, closer does not mean logistically simpler. ” We’ve been working on it for three months.continues Jean-Baptiste Bolvin. We had to change our plans at a moment’s notice. But we immediately thought of Le Struthof. With the visit of the European Parliament the next day, we move from Nazi Germany to reconciliation. »
Neither simpler nor cheaper, for that matter, because rather than sending a hundred children from Lyon to Eastern Europe, there are twice as many of them going to Eastern France, for a slightly higher: 98,000 euros during the last trip to Auschwitz in 2020, 118,000 euros for Alsace this year ” in an inflationary environment “, we are told.
“An indisputable journey”
So once the political micro-controversy of the month of January has been evacuated, what to think of this evolution? While waiting for an evaluation of this new formula on June 5, it seemed to be unanimous on May 10 and 11 when a delegation made up of elected officials and services from the Métropole up to its president Bruno Bernard, organizations ( Rectorate, Crif, Cultural Institute of Judaism, association The Roots of tomorrow) and representatives of parents of students (FCPE, Peep) accompanied a hundred children on site, after another hundred the previous week.
« It is an indisputable trip because it is extremely interesting to be interested in what happened on French territory, appreciates Richard Zelmati, president of Crif Auvergne Rhône-Alpes. Whether it’s Strasbourg or Poland, the change of scenery is in any case the same for many of the most disadvantaged pupils for whom the challenge is already to ” get out of their neighborhood “Slips a teacher in Caluire-et-Cuire in Segpa. Mission accomplished.
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