Editorial

French lessons

February 28, 2008

At a time of willful amnesia in Europe about the facts and legacy of the Holocaust, French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a brave and important move in calling for all fifth-grade students in his country to learn about the Shoa. Under Sarkozy’s painful yet life-affirming proposal, schoolchildren will be required to learn the story of one of the 11,000 French-Jewish children murdered by the Nazis (in all, 75,000 French Jews were killed in the Holocaust).

Sarkozy’s proposal was met with all the usual objections, ranging from fear that it will alienate France’s large and growing Muslim population to concerns that it will traumatize les enfants. It’s just as easy to argue, however, that no one has more to learn from such a curriculum than a young Muslim, and that questions of trauma have been addressed creatively and sensitively by educators in Israel and America.

Facing its own difficult history, which has included both the Dreyfus Affair and the shameful Vichy episode, has not been France’s strong suit. Sarkozy’s proposal, like his unabashed support for Israel, addresses this, while also providing a model that needs to be followed in other European capitals. As novelist Thane Rosenbaum put it in The New York Sun: “If nothing else, it will remind the citizens of France that their remembrance of the Holocaust has been inadequate and long overdue, but, in the hands of French school children, perhaps it will not be too late.”