“We are pleased to welcome the President and the General Director of CRIF on this symbolic day, the World Human Rights Day.” Those were the words spoken by André Rossinot, co-chairman of the Radical Party, as together with Cabinet Minister Jean-Louis Borloo he greeted the presence of the CRIF leaders at the plenary session. André Rossinot, whose party is “associated” with the UMP majority party, had gone to Auschwitz on 27 January 2005, accompanied by his advisor Jean-Jacques Curiel, to take part in the ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of that infamous extermination camp.
André Rossinot, who is mayor of Nancy, a city in Eastern France that is twinned with Kiryat Shmona in Israel, also reminded the audience that the Radical Party’s offices were close to the former Vel’ d’Hiv (the cycling stadium where several thousand Jews were rounded up in 1942 by the French police before being deported by the Nazis), “a place of sinister memory, where President Jacques Chirac made one of his most important speeches, in which he recognized the responsibility of the French State in the deportation of its Jews”.
Jean-Louis Borloo, Minister for social cohesion, is now co-chairman of the Radical Party.
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