Hervé Gerbi, president of CRIF Grenoble-Dauphiné, came to explain to the microphone of France Bleu Isère the very particular importance of these commemorations of the Vel D’hiv roundup in this year 2022. The 80th anniversary of this historic event does not arrive in any context. It is that of an upsurge in anti-Semitism, which the Head of State, Emmanuel Macron, described the same day in Pithiviers as “rampant”.
The Grenoble lawyer and president of CRIF gave a long speech on Sunday July 17 in Grenoble, at the Paul Mistral park, to be found in full here.
Solidarity and fraternity must ward off hate speech and separatist shortcuts – Hervé Gerbi, president of CRIF Grenoble-Dauphiné
“The CRIF has, in fact, a double moral obligation. The CRIF must first not yield to any compromise on the humanist values which are its own and those of Judaism: the respect and development of each guaranteed by the essential principle of secularism. A principle that is not of variable geometry. A principle that unites in a requirement to live together and not which divides in a requirement to live with. The CRIF must then take its place in today’s debates so that the republican principles which cement our society are reaffirmed: solidarity and fraternity must ward off hate speech and separatist shortcuts. This is also what this day commemorating the racist and anti-Semitic crimes of the French State and of homage to the just reminds us: never give in to those who seek to divide. Today they draw on our walls, here or in Avignon, despicable caricatures. Tomorrow they will point , namely, scapegoats. On the contrary, let us be worthy of the message carried by the survivors of the shoah and the righteous of France. Your presence today, at this precise moment, beyond your background, your conditions and your opinions is the finest tribute and the best recognition that can be paid to the victims of the Shoah and to the righteous of France. The Judaism of 2022 draws from its roots this spark of light that never goes out. The 6 million Jews exterminated in the Holocaust and the righteous we honor today are the symbolic representation of these lights that illuminate the world, and show only one path: that of life.
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