Benjamin Peter 10:49 a.m., March 19, 2022
In March 2012, a series of attacks caused terror in Toulouse and Montauban.
A soldier was killed on the 11th, two others on the 15th, three children and a teacher from a Jewish school on the 19th. The author of this attack: Mohammed Merah, 23 years old.
A student present that day remembers at the microphone of Europe 1.
It was ten years ago.
Mohammed Merah entered the Jewish school Ozar Hatorah in Toulouse and murdered Myriam Monsonego, as well as Arié, Gabriel and Jonathan Sandler.
On Sunday, the Head of State will travel to Toulouse with the President of Israel Isaac Herzog for a tribute ceremony.
Ten years later in a book of testimonies, Jonathan Chetrit, aged 17 at the time and in the final year of the attack, wanted to reconstruct this morning through everyone's point of view.
To not forget.
Europe 1 met him.
>> Find Europe weekend morning - 6-8 in podcast and replay here
"It's so violent and unexpected, that there is no room for feelings".
It will take long minutes for Jonathan Chetrit to realize what is happening in this school he loves so much.
A man has just shot three children and a teacher.
"I hear gunshots and at that moment I have the impression that they are firecrackers. And then the CPE arrives screaming that there is a shooter in the school and I go into the operational. I cut off all feeling and I tell myself that we have to act very quickly", he recalls.
An hour-by-hour account of the attack
He then puts the youngest in a reserve without knowing if the killer is still present or not.
In his book
Toulouse, March 19, 2012
, he collected the testimonies of students, teachers and parents, which allow us to relive hour by hour the terror and incomprehension that followed the attack.
An attack that targeted them because they were Jews.
READ ALSO
- Samuel Sandler, father of a victim of Mohammed Merah, is indignant at Mélenchon's "unacceptable" remarks
"At the moment when it happens, there is still this idea that crosses my mind, to say to me 'it had to happen, that I was touched in my person as a Jew and that's how it' is happening'", continues the young man.
But for him, this attack which made him more vigilant, more cautious on a daily basis, reinforced his idea that he should stay in France.
"I want to show that Jews have their place in France," he concludes.