The head of state is the first president to participate in this annual ceremony organized by the Union of Auschwitz deportees (UDA), according to members.
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, 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 Elysée, 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 return'.
He indicates that initiatives will be taken "in the coming weeks", during the French presidency of the Council of the EU, to "fight against all forms of discrimination and reaffirm the specificity of anti-Semitism".
© 2022 AFP