Nearly 80 years later, Ginette Kolinka still remembers the weather on March 13, 1944. “It was a spring day, the first rays of the sun warmed our skin. It was perfect for hanging out a little outside during the lunch break”, recounts the nonagenarian in front of a hundred teachers, gathered on Wednesday October 25 in a conference room at the Shoah Memorial in Drancy, in Seine-Saint-Denis. “It was on that day that we were arrested by the Gestapo,” she says. While taking refuge in an unoccupied zone, near Avignon, her family was denounced by a resident of the neighborhood. Because she was Jewish, Ginette, her father, her brother and her nephew were interned in the Drancy camp, then deported to the Polish camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. As soon as the train arrives, his father and brother will be killed in the gas chambers. Transferred to the camps of Bergen-Belsen, in Germany, then Theresiendstadt, in Czechoslovakia, Ginette survives. When she found her mother and sisters in June 1945, she weighed 26 kilos. “It is now up to you, teachers, to pass on this story. It takes courage to tell it, especially at this moment,” she asserts in front of the silent assembly. “But it is on you that we place our hopes. Because soon there will be only you left to carry our word. And we must never forget that.”
The fight is not yet won. Just last week, Ginette Kolinka had to explain to the salesman of a major household appliances brand the meaning of the tattoo she has on her left arm, a number that was engraved into her skin upon her arrival at Auschwitz . “When he saw him, he asked me if it was my phone number. We have to fight so that everyone remembers. And so that we can no longer say that we didn’t know,” he whispers. -She. Among the teachers of history-geography, philosophy or economic and social sciences who came to meet this “transmitter of memory”, these words particularly resonate. Since the Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7, more than 4,000 online anti-Semitic messages have been reported to the Pharos platform. The Ministry of the Interior also counted, from October 7 to 24, 588 anti-Semitic acts – approximately 35% more than those counted for the whole of 2022.
“More than ever, it is necessary to talk with our students about anti-Semitism and discrimination,” confides Séverine, a history and geography teacher in a college in the Ile-de-France region. A teacher for 30 years, the fifty-year-old admits to hearing, sometimes, “increasingly strong stereotypes about the Jewish community”, coupled with a lack of knowledge of the history of this community. Since October 7, several of his students have also questioned the tributes paid to the victims of Hamas in Israel. “They ask us, for example, why we focus more on Israeli deaths than on Palestinian deaths, why pro-Palestinian demonstrations were banned… So we explain, we deconstruct. If we hear anti-Semitic prejudices, we show caricatures of 1930s, explaining that it is always the same stereotypes that recur, the same patterns of discrimination… And we remind ourselves where they can lead,” she explains.
“Memorial rivalry”
A colleague, a philosophy teacher in final year class in another high school, agrees. “We approach the subject of the Shoah to study the mechanisms that were at work at the time and to show that they are not all resolved today. I spoke to my students about these 4,000 anti-Semitic reports on Pharos, to show that unfortunately this thought is still relevant today. We dissect how it works together, we learn not to fall into the traps,” he testifies. In his economics and social sciences class, his colleague Hugo* also addressed the subject of anti-Semitic acts in public space or online. “On social networks or at home, students have heard a lot of things since October 7. There are ‘people saying’, positions taken… It’s important to take stock of all this, to listen to them, to define what discrimination is, what the law says on the subject, then possibly deconstruct what they have heard or read. In the establishment of these teachers, a study trip to Auschwitz, in partnership with the Holocaust memorial, will be organized during the year 2024. “In this context of the return of anti-Semitism in France, this trip will allow us to connect the present and the past, to transmit something of History, to explain that terrible things have happened and that under no circumstances must they happen again”, underlines Hugo.
For Jacques Fredj, president of the Shoah memorial, the students’ visit is also an opportunity to answer simple questions, which go beyond the history of deportation and the Second World War. “Students will ask us, on this occasion, what a Jew is, if we can be French and Jewish, what are the differences between a Frenchman, a German or a Jewish Israeli, what terms to use to talk about the Israeli conflict- Palestinian… We are here to explain without taboos, to talk about crimes and the concepts that accompany them with the right words,” he explains. Ditto when certain young people evoke anti-Semitic clichés during their visit. “Sometimes, some people talk about Jews and money, Jews who control the world, communitarian Jews… We use history to show them that these stereotypes have been the same for centuries, that conspiracy theories are repeat, we put them in front of this documentation, we establish freedom of speech. It marks them”, illustrates the director.
Dora*, a documentalist in a college in the Ile-de-France region, insists on the importance of memory work. “At the moment, there may be a rivalry in memory on certain subjects. For example, we hear from certain students that there would be ‘only for the Jews’, that sort of thing… Testimonies around the Shoah can then be a gateway to describing the mechanisms at work in other genocides, to remind us that the same patterns are repeated over and over again. For the librarian, meeting witnesses from this period also makes it possible to make the events “more real in the eyes of the students”. A few years ago, during an exhibition at the CDI of “fairly harsh” documents and photographs on life in the camps, two young students took the teacher to task. “But ma’am, is it true?”, they would have asked her. “It was only when they saw these photos that they realized what had really happened. Direct testimony often has the same effect: adolescents delve into reality, understand that the six million deaths are not just a number in their history book,” says Dora.
“Tense” atmosphere
It is precisely to avoid this lack of recognition that Daniel Wancier, former “hidden child” under the Occupation, who narrowly escaped the Vel d’Hiv roundup, continues to testify tirelessly in schools. Like many “memory passers”, the man avoids addressing the current events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he comes to report his story. Since October 7, no student has questioned him on the subject. “Faced with the rise in anti-Semitic acts, I just remind them that in 1933, the Nazis were elected democratically, in one of the most cultured countries in Europe, speaking without embarrassment of inferior and superior races,” underlines -he. Ditto when some anti-vax people marched with a fake yellow star during the Covid vaccination, or demonstrators wore striped deportee costumes in Italy. “At the time, I brought them my mother’s real yellow star, and I told them my story. That’s often enough to set the record straight,” he believes.
“Very rarely, it happens that there are small incidents, a student who does not want to listen for example,” indicates Arlette Testyler, president of the Union of Auschwitz Deportees. At the start of a testimony in a vocational high school, several years ago, a student turned his back on him. “The teacher was outraged and wanted to make him turn around. I made a sign for him not to move, and I began my story. It only took half an hour for the student to turn around. himself, and listens to me. And everything was won”, remembers this former hidden child, survivor of the Vel d’Hiv roundup. “I always say it to the students I have met: if only 10% of you, in the face of the revisionists, the anti-Semites, can speak up, transmit our history, say that all this existed, that they seen, heard, listened to… Then we will have succeeded in our duty,” she explains.
In the coming weeks, the nonagenarian has planned numerous workshops to continue telling her story, despite a tense atmosphere in certain establishments. “Yesterday I received a phone call from a professor who preferred to postpone my visit after having received threats,” she assures, not wishing to give further details on the question. It will take more to discourage Arlette Testyler. “I will continue to answer all questions, there will be no taboos. If I don’t answer, who will?” she asks. Roger Wolman, a former child hidden during the Occupation and son of a deportee, who regularly testifies alongside Daniel Wancier in schools, is also preparing for possible incidents. “Everything has always gone well on my side, but I have heard, like everyone else, the increase in anti-Semitic acts in France. In an establishment in Cannes that I know very well, anti-Semitic tags were discovered and a history teacher was directly targeted. The atmosphere is acute,” he regrets. No matter: he will continue to pass on his story and that of all the children deported or hidden during the Second World War. “We have to do it while we can,” he breathes. “The memory smugglers will gradually disappear, and all that will remain will be books, films… and opinions. However, anti-Semitism cannot be an opinion. It will always have to be remembered.”
* First names have been changed.
.