"We refuse that the victims remain anonymous", declared Serge Klarsfeld, president of the "Sons and Daughters of Jews Deported from France" organization, "So that history does not repeat, so that France is France which we like, generous, tolerant, maintaining the values of the Republic in a perfect condemnation of racism and anti-Semitism ", underlined CRIF's Roger Cukierman.
Speaking during the commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust, Roger Cukierman said, "I was six years old. It is an age which does not leave many recollections.
- But I still hear the noise of the German boots rhythmically striking the pavement of the city of Nice.
- I still remember our hasty departure from the apartment one morning when my mother had just learnt at the baker's that half of the building had been rounded up during the night.
- I remember my mother saying to me that should the police break into our new apartment I was to tell her "Goodbye, Madam" and run away.
- I remember my father taking me to a Catholic convent where the nuns were going to hide me, and telling me that I was henceforth called Roger Fabre (a typical name of the Southern French region).
- I remember the slap I received because I dared to tell my dear and nice father, in confidence, "But I know my true name (is) Roger Cukierman".
Our tiny family cell was lucky enough to survive. But all the rest of the family who had remained in Poland was wiped out. One day of October, 1942, 8.000 Jews of the Ozarow shtetl were rounded up in front of the synagogue. They were all taken to Treblinka. And from there, they all disappeared.
Among them were my grandparents, my uncles, my aunts, my cousins whom I did not know, which are faceless for me. The memory of my roots was stolen from me. He who cannot remember faces, places, sounds, smells is an orphan of the memory.
I visited this shtetl of Poland my father had left in the thirties to flee anti-Semitism and poverty and to join the country of human rights. I saw an intact village, houses, men, and women. There was a frame but the soul was missing. My capacity of imagination was insufficient. How could I imagine this theater was the synagogue of my family?
The emotion came only the next day, some hundred kilometer from there, in this place called Treblinka, in front of a simple stone among the others, with a simple name on it Ozarow, the one of this shtetl erased by from the history of mankind. In front of this stone, my daughter Orlika sang in Hebrew a poem of Bialik. And there, in front of this stone, appeared my grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins. And we all wept.
The Jews of France were not spared. The government of France led by Marshal Pétain collaborated with the Nazis, turned the Jews into game, and delivered them to a fatal fate.
And among them, so many children who would have been able to enrich mankind with poets, scholars, and just plain people. Children that were killed, as were killed the children and the grandchildren they would have had.
In thirty years, in fifty years, there will not be survivors anymore to testify. We, who were miraculously saved from the horror of the Holocaust, our duty is to follow the example of those who like Simone Veil, Henri Bulawko, or Serge Klarsfeld, fight to keep alive the memory of our martyrs.
I am standing here today in front of you because I want my children, and their children to remain Jewish, so that each one of them would immortalize the values of Judaism and contribute to the defeat of the objectives pursued by Hitler.
If two thirds of the Jews of France survived, it is because numerous Frenchmen helped the Jews at the risk of their life. How shall I ever forget the Catholic nuns who hid the child I was and saved my life, at the risk of theirs?
These isolated voices coming from Christians or secular people, often of modest origins, showed the way of dignity.
So that history does not repeat itself, so that France remains the France we like, generous and tolerant, it has to maintain the values of the Republic in a standfast condemnation of racism and anti-Semitism.
The violence we witnessed in this beginning of a new millennium proved that the forces of hatred appeared under their most dangerous shape, that of religious fanaticism.
This religious fanaticism gone astray threatens the Jews. It threatens the courageous State of Israel, our pride, and without which we could not live. It threatens the rest of mankind.
The civilized world built up itself on the moral values brought forward by Judaism.
Our deported relatives have no graves on which we can collect ourselves.
The murdered deported people were deprived of this elementary right.
Their ashes flew away for ever. And this right which was stolen from them becomes for us a duty, a duty to remind all these names that we can read in privileged places such this precious Memorial.
It is mandatory to testify, it is mandatory to break the silence of oblivion.
Let the shadow of our martyrs protects our children and the State of Israel!"
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