Le Figaro Lyon
“How can you not see a sign? The date of his death corresponding to the date of his father's arrest, the event which determined his life and his humanist commitment
.
In the words of Alain Jakubowicz, lawyer who was a civil party in the Barbie trial in 1987 in Lyon, Lyon commemorated, on Sunday, the raid on rue Sainte-Catherine, where Robert Badinter's father was arrested, on February 9, 1943 A tribute to the “testament” that the former Minister of Justice, who died on Friday, left against anti-Semitism.
Simon, the father of the former Minister of Justice, was among the 86 Jews arrested and deported that day by the Gestapo commanded by Klaus Barbie.
Robert Badinter's father, then aged 47, was deported to the Sobibor extermination camp, in what is now Poland.
He will never come back.
Robert Badinter
“came to wake us up
,” said Richard Zelmati, regional president of the representative council of Jewish institutions (CRIF) of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
“He reminded us of our duties, considering that we cannot separate the anti-Semitism which killed here from that which still kills today.
And his message cannot be understood and heard other than as a testament
,” he added during the ceremony, taking up an extract from a speech given by Robert Badinter in February 2015, the only time he had participated in Lyon in the commemoration of the roundup.
In his speech, the former Minister of Justice expressed his concern to see
"the bloody face of anti-Semitism reappear with horror in France"
, after the Islamist attacks in Toulouse in 2012. Robert Badinter then stigmatized
“barbarians like their Nazi predecessors, driven by the same anti-Semitic hatred”
.
For the CRIF representative, this 2015 speech remains
“more relevant than ever”
, after the abuses committed by Hamas on October 7 against Jews in Israel.
“Let us all bet that no one will deny the will to which Robert Badinter now obliges us
,” concluded Richard Zelmati.
“The city of Lyon will never accept discrimination, intolerance, threats, insults against Jews, or any other community because of their supposed origins
,” declared Grégory Doucet, the environmentalist mayor of Lyon.