July 16, 1992. It has been 50 years since the 13,152 Jewish victims of the Vel d'Hiv roundup were herded into the French stadium before being deported to the death camps.
A commemorative ceremony is organized at the former location of the winter velodrome on rue Nélaton in the 15th arrondissement of Paris.
The President of the Republic François Mitterrand is then accompanied by the President of the Constitutional Council Robert Badinter.
But upon his arrival, whistles and violent invectives from part of the audience greeted the head of state.
In question, his declaration, two days earlier, according to which the Republic is not accountable for the actions of Vichy.
When his speech arrives, Robert Badinter, furious, unleashes his anger, launching into what will remain as one of his most remarkable speeches.
“I would have expected to experience everything, except the feeling that I felt a moment ago and which I now deliver to you with all my human strength:
You have shamed me!
You shamed me
, thinking about what happened there
,” he declaims, his words held high, his index finger pointed towards his audience.
“
I only ask for the silence that the dead call for.
Shut up !
»
Robert Badinter, 50th anniversary ceremony of the Vel d’Hiv Rafle, July 16, 1992
Indifferent to the timid applause, he continues:
“There are words where it is said in The Word: 'The dead listen to you!'
Do you think they're listening to... that?"
, he lectures again.
In dead silence, the former Minister of Justice, his voice thunderous, weighs each of his words:
“I am not asking for anything, no applause.
I only ask for the silence that the dead call for
.
And to assert, with all his authority:
“Shut up!”
.
“Leave this place of contemplation immediately.
You dishonor the cause that you believe you are serving
,” continues Robert Badinter, beside himself.
2002: “what made me angry was this reminder of my grandmother’s words”
In an interview conducted for a France Culture program in 2002, the former minister returned to this memorable speech.
Writing his speech – the one he had prepared and not the improvised one –
“led me to immerse myself in the documents of the time which were terrible, in the memories of the survivors which were painful, at times tragic”
, explains he first.
“I strangely remembered what my grandmother said with an inimitable accent: ‘when you talk about the dead, they listen to you’
,” he confided then.
The boos come.
As Robert Badinter takes the podium, new howls and new invectives against the President of the Republic arise.
“There, I was suddenly seized with anger, with fury, which had nothing to do with the presence of Mitterrand (...) But which made me beside myself, it was like living, this thought, this reminder of what my grandmother said: the dead listen to us.
“
And I said to myself confusedly: what infamy.
How dare we, when we have just said the prayer for the dead, behave ignominiously, transform a ceremony like that into a kind of miserable political meeting
,” he continues.
“
I was beside myself,”
he admits.
“This was also seen and heard.
(...) I was ashamed that Jews behaved like that towards Jewish martyrs in such a solemn moment, immediately after the kaddish
(Jewish prayer of consolation to surround the dead, Editor's note)
.
Passion threw me off my hinges.”
Vichy and the Republic
Still on France Culture, returning to the cause of the boos from some at the arrival of François Mitterrand, Robert Badinter again defended:
“On the question of the responsibility of the Republic, I declared - and it was also the feeling of Mitterrand [...] - that we could not hold the Republic responsible for what had happened there.
We must never forget that the first victim of the Vichy State was the Republic.
[...] It was on the corpse of the Republic that they had built their regime
.