By SudOuest.fr with AFP
The Head of State is the first president to participate in this annual ceremony organized by the Union of Auschwitz deportees on the occasion of the international day dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust
Emmanuel Macron rekindled the flame on Thursday, January 27 evening under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris alongside two Holocaust survivors on the occasion of the international day dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. The head of state is the first president to take part in this annual ceremony organized by the Union of Auschwitz deportees (UDA). He rekindled the flame in the presence of Esther Senot, deported at the age of 15 in September 1943, and Victor Perahia, deported to Bergen-Belsen, the two survivors with whom he spoke.
Accompanied by Geneviève Darrieussecq, Minister Delegate in charge of Memory and Veterans Affairs, he also paid tribute to Raphaël Esrail, the president of the UDA, who died on Saturday at the age of 96 in Lannion (Côtes-d’Armor).
In a video posted Thursday by the Élysée, Emmanuel Macron insists on the need for “this work of memory and humanism” on the Holocaust. “We owe it in particular to the younger generations: so that the memory of the Shoah will never be forgotten, so that the atrocity of our history will never be repeated, so that no young European can ignore it” because “the ‘to ignore is to take the risk of letting some people reappear the words of the worst, of letting the bad winds come back’.
Fight against anti-Semitism
Initiatives will be taken “in the coming weeks” to “fight against all forms of discrimination and reaffirm the specificity of anti-Semitism”
He indicates that initiatives will be taken “in the coming weeks”, during the French presidency of the Council of the European Union, to “fight against all forms of discrimination and reaffirm the specificity of anti-Semitism”.
Prime Minister Jean Castex reaffirmed in Poland France’s fight against anti-Semitism, but also against those who “distort the history” of the Holocaust, on the occasion of the 77and anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau.