De Villepin calls for an "alive and active memory"

[Carnyx]

The French Prime Minister Domenique de Villepin called yesterday, at the time of the Vel d'Hiv raid commemoration in Paris, for an "alive and active memory" to fight "all hatreds" and terrorism.

"We must learn how with it to avoid the trap of fanaticism which, in spite of the lesson of past, disarm never completely", he declared in front of several hundred of person which took part in the official commemoration of the 63th birthday of Vel d'Hiv raid in July 16th and 17th 1942. Nearly 13 000 Parisian were carried off by the Vichy government before being sent to the camps of death, because they were Jewish.

"Against hatred, all hatreds, the terrorism which stain with blood our capital and makes weigh a threat on all the people, affirm our principles and the respect of the State of right, he affirmed. Greatest firmness, yes. Greatest vigilance, yes. The closest co-operation between all the States, yes ".

The Prime Minister ensured that "by means of will and justice, we will win this fight".

"Do not give to the terrorists satisfaction to sow the fear and the doubt in our minds."

Previously, the chief of the government paid homage to the victims of this raid while reading, sobs in the voice, the letter of "Marc Moïse, 11 years old". "Letters of peoples all ages, of all conditions (...) these words launched to the adventure to be read, to reassure close relations, parents (...) I wish that we keep it forever in us the infinite distress and the insane hope".

"Against all the forms of anti-semitism, racism or xenophobia, which are as much of attack to the dignity of each man, let us fight without slackening, underlined Mr. De Villepin. In this field, any physical or verbal attack, very reached, any negation is unacceptable "

He says : "My government will fight them with greatest severity".

In the presence of the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, of the president of the Foundation for the memory of Shoah, Simone Veil, of the chief rabbi of France, Joseph Sitruk, the president of the Council representative of the Jewish institutions (CRIF), Roger Cuckierman wondered about what "is it necessary to do for the tolerance to become a natural behavior between the men as between the nations". "The spectacle of violence which
the beginning of this third millenium offers to us shows that the man does not improve".

July the 16, and 17 1942, 12 884 Jews were arrested in Paris area by the French police force on instruction of the Vichy government. Before being transferred in the camps from Drancy, Pithiviers, Compiegne or Beaune-the-Rolande, anterooms of the death camps Nazis, 8160 of
them (including 4115 children, 2916 women and 1129 men) were parked in unhealthy conditions in the Hiver's Cycle-racing now disappeared, and replaced by a memorial.

This ceremony coincides with the national Day with the memory of the victims of the racist and anti-semites crimes and homage to the "right peoples" of France.

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