PToday no one is ignorant of the existence of the Bourtzwiller district of Mulhouse, where a religious gathering was held, considered with hindsight as the main point of spread of the Covid-19 epidemic in France. The path of the virus is clearly described in a story (The world dated March 29 and 30) which hardly addresses one of the major aspects of this drama: the devastation caused by this religious event but above all community, in the population of this district which will surely count more dead than the community which participated to this gathering.
The current fate of Bourtzwiller, simply designated by Ariane Chemin and Raphaëlle Bacqué as a ” unfavored neighborhood “, according to the consecrated formula, symbolizes the culmination of a history marked by poverty, unemployment, violence and finally communitarianism, including the archives of the World keep track. In the early 1980s, your special envoy, Yves-Marie Labé, who disappeared in 2011, titled his investigation into the neighborhood: “Bourtzwiller, the poorest district in France”. The vocabulary used in World then does not give in to the “underprivileged” euphemism or the “miserable” hyperbola.
This article, synthetic and clear, draws up a lucid inventory of the situation since Bourtzwiller, of which very few of your readers knew then the existence, is retained to experiment, in his college and around him, one of the first zones of priority education (ZEP): this is the moment when we hope to remedy the failures of an improvised school consolidation without clear objectives or, at least, to fill in the gaps.
Almost four decades later, the view taken by the very long story cited above, which was modeled on The world has adopted for several years, with details and anecdotes. The “scenario” of the event is presented as a series of circumstances. The main victims of the contagion caused by this gathering would be the members of the founding and animating family of the Christian Open Door, sick yet taken care of optimally and very quickly by the public hospital, while the epidemic spread in Alsace and elsewhere. They were threatened with death, we are reminded, on the same social networks that the proselytism of this community does not disdain to use. Only the fall of the story tempers this compassion.
However what happened to Bourtzwiller is not only an unfortunate accident: the event signals our collective powerlessness – and not only political, whatever the names of those responsible – to wrest the suburb from an average city that did not deserve it to the economic and social determinism in which it is trapped. The time is long gone when, thanks to the exemplary impetus characteristic of the first generation of ZEPs, certain young people in the neighborhood succeeded in their studies and their lives. But they left the neighborhood to never return, until, some admit, no longer pronounce the name. They have been replaced by residents as diverse as they are reluctant to accept republican law.
The ambition for success has turned into a social dressing, elected officials, public services, teachers and associations are worn out and discouraged: they had worked so that the inhabitants of Bourtzwiller could live, train and work with dignity, but there where they had dreamed of bringing culture to life, they saw places of worship settle with the installation in 1989 of this evangelical community which prospered at great expense, followed, with a few stones throws, by the construction of a huge mosque. It is easy to imagine that other, less resigned, neighborhoods would not have easily tolerated the ostensible presence of these community spaces and would have known how to find a legal solution to avoid their establishment.
Faced with this harsh reality, would it not be more urgent, in the upheaval that we are experiencing, to question the real victims of this disaster – the inhabitants of the district and of the region, the relatives of the sick – than to collect as long the “sighs” and complaints of Pastor Peterschmitt and his relatives? We can certainly only deplore the disappearance of seventeen faithful from this community, we must condemn the threats targeting the pastors responsible for this gathering. But everyone knows it today, after the end of the health crisis, we will have to face its economic and social consequences, we will have to rethink our lifestyles and our relationship with the community, among others.
Beyond the current solidarity which risks being punctual, beyond the criticisms on the management of the crisis, Bourtzwiller expects something else. The inconspicuous way in which the Christian Open Door pursues its activity can only create tensions. By going to the scene before the tragedy, President Emmanuel Macron was obviously well informed about the risks of communitarianism. By focusing his attention on the action of the caregivers, by refusing to collect the moods of those responsible for this rally, he committed himself. For its part, the drafting of World understood the need to review their working methods. It can and must go to the essential today.
Geneviève Winter, Nice
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