A speech with strong symbolic value. Present this Sunday in Pithiviers (Loiret), on the site of the old station that saw the transit of some of the 13,000 Jews detained on July 16, 1942 at the Vélodrome d’hiver in Paris, then sent to concentration camps, Emmanuel Macron denounced “the prowling anti-Semitism” during a speech intended to be offensive.
“It desecrates our graves, interferes in the debates of certain television sets, plays with the complacency of certain political forces, it also feeds on a certain form of revisionism, even negationism (…) anti-Semitism is still there,” said the president.
“Neither Pétain nor Laval wanted to save Jews”
What to see there a reference, in particular, to Éric Zemmour who had stated on several occasions that Marshal Pétain had saved French Jews during World War II, contrary to what the works of historians indicate.
“Neither Pétain nor Laval, neither of them wanted to save the Jews. It is a falsification of history,” the Elysée tenant still judged, before adding that “those who indulge in these lies seek to destroy the Republic and the unity of the nation”.
These comments also refer to the protest since Saturday night in the ranks of the presidential coalition, but also on the left following a controversial tweet by LFI deputy Mathilde Panot.
“We have not finished with anti-Semitism. It is even more ardent, creeping in than in 1995 in our country, in Europe and in so many places in the world”, criticized Emmanuel Macron, calling on the “republican forces” to “redouble their vigilance”.
“France did it, the French state did it”
The Head of State also took advantage of this speech to follow in the footsteps of Jacques Chirac, who in 1995 acknowledged for the first time France’s responsibility in the deportation of Jews to Germany on the occasion of a speech at Ve d’Hiv. He also quoted the former president’s words evoking “France, accomplishing the irreparable.”
“In this antechamber of the camps, in front of their jailers in kepi, the families whispered words in Yiddish to reassure themselves, to tell each other that France would never do that. However, France did it, the French state did it,” the president explained before several personalities such as the historian Serge Klarsfeld or the camp survivor Ginette Kolinka.
“The French State has deliberately failed in all its duties”
In this place that has not welcomed travelers since the end of the 1960s and that has just been transformed into a museum by the Shoah Memorial, the tenant of the Elysée judges once again that “the French State has deliberately failed in all the duties of the homeland of human rights. Not a single Nazi soldier participated in this raid.”
Source: BFM TV
