Paris (AFP)
On July 16, 1995, Jacques Chirac speaks at the Square of the martyrs of Vel d'Hiv, in Paris: for the first time, a president recognizes the responsibility of France in the deportations of Jews.
He stands out clearly from his predecessor François Mitterrand who had always refused. "I will not apologize on behalf of France, the Republic has nothing to do with it, I think France is not responsible," the former Socialist president said in 1994.
"France, fatherland of the lights and human rights, land of reception and asylum, France, that day, carried out the irreparable", declares this day of July the head of the State, who presides over the ceremonies of the 53rd anniversary of the Vel d'Hiv roundup, which began on July 16, 1942 in Paris. "Yes, the criminal madness of the occupant was seconded by French, by the French state," he adds.
On 16 and 17 July 1942, some 13,000 Jews had been arrested at their homes by French police and gendarmes before being assembled at the Winter Velodrome and then sent to a concentration camp, from which many were not to return.
"We keep an imprescriptible debt towards them," says Jacques Chirac before former Jewish deportees and their families, representatives of the Jewish community and religious authorities.
"Recognizing the mistakes of the past and the mistakes made by the state, to ignore nothing of the dark hours of our history is simply to defend an idea of man, of his freedom and of his dignity. against the dark forces, constantly at work, "says Mr. Chirac who calls for" the spirit of vigilance "while" breathes the spirit of hatred, brightened here by fundamentalism, fueled there by fear and 'exclusion".
The words of Jacques Chirac were very favorably received by the participants in the ceremony who praised the "courage". According to Serge Klarsfeld, president of the Sons and Daughters of the Jewish deportees of France, this speech, "praised worldwide as a brave and salutary recognition", marked "a deep rupture".
Placing himself resolutely in Jacques Chirac's footsteps, President François Hollande in turn acknowledged in 2012 that the crime committed against the Jews during the Vel d'Hiv roundup had been "by France".
In July 2017, his successor Emmanuel Macron wanted to "perpetuate the line stretched in 1995 by Jacques Chirac", during the commemoration of the round-up to which was invited for the first time an Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. "It is France who organized the roundup," he then hammered.
© 2019 AFP