Eighty years after Auschwitz, a ceremony at the foot of Montpellier City Hall… to remember

Michaël Iancu, Perla Danan, Mayor Michaël Delafosse and Prefect François-Xavier Lausch took turns at the microphone. Midi Libre – JEAN-MICHEL MART

This Monday, January 27, the day in Montpellier ended with speeches and wreath-laying to show support for the Jewish community that experienced the hell of the extermination camps.

Barbarism, horror… The words flowed one after the other this Monday evening in the gardens of the town hall to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and what the first witnesses of this hell discovered on site: the soldiers of the Red Army, taken as an example by several of the speakers at the podium. One after the other: Michaël Iancu, director of the Maimonides Institute, Perla Danan, regional president of the CRij (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France), the mayor and the prefect.

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Message of humanity, but also politics

All described the camp, the infamy, the death. The anti-Semitic resurgence that strikes with more than 1,600 acts still recorded each year. Messages filled with humanity, invitations to live together, to secularism. Political messages too, like that of Perla Danan who asks that “LFI be removed from the public debate in the same way as the extreme right given the situation in Gaza”. “Our children hug the walls“, she emphasizes. The mayor, Michaël Delafosse, in a much calmer tone than that pronounced on the Comédie the day after October 7, 2023, recalled that many of today's listeners have “absences on their family tree” , ending his remarks with a unifying “Count on us to continue working against racism and anti-Semitism”. Finally, in the mouth of the prefect, François-Xavier Lauch, the letter from the Minister Delegate for Remembrance, Montpellier's Patricia Mirallès, did not forget that Auschwitz had caused 1.1 million deaths and was part of the history of humanity. Remember, so as not to forget. Above all, do not forget.

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