It will provide an opportunity for CRIF to meet numerous local figures as well as the President of Israel Shimon Peres. For Richard Prasquier, the ghetto uprising in April 1943 “is a central symbol because even if it did not upset the military balance, it was the first such revolt in a Nazi-occupied city. In Jewish history it plays a fundamental role as a memory of heroism and evidence that the Jews did not let themselves be led like sheep to the slaughter”.
The importance of this commemoration is underscored by the presence in Warsaw of President Shimon Peres. Richard Prasquier also notes that “Poland has trodden an extraordinary path in the last twenty years. It is now a fully fledged member of Europe. But problems are re-emerging strongly when it comes to remembering the past.”
“A new Poland is emerging, capable of assimilating the full history of the country without embellishment,” argues the President of CRIF, for whom “the role of Jews is to lend a helping hand to this new Poland and together build a common history.”
Richard Prasquier does not forget that a significant anti-Semitic fringe is still present among the Polish population. Radio Marija is its best known symbol.
“We should also not forget that despite all the drama of relations between Jews and Poles, there were several thousand Polish Righteous who saved a certain number of Jews,” comments Richard Prasquier.
On Sunday 6th April, in Paris, CRIF and the Shoah Memorial commemorated the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Speaking on behalf of CRIF, Dr Prasquier had this to say: “There is a connection between the creation of CRIF and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. To those who are inclined to forget that CRIF was founded during the Holocaust, that it was created by Jews to bring Jews together, as opposed to the UGIF and the Judenrats, and that more than others it finds its legitimacy in its relationship with remembrance, I wish to remind them of the story of a man who died but a few weeks ago, who was known to many of you and who took part in the creation of CRIF. I am referring to Adam Rayski, one of the great names in French Judaism.
This is what Adam Rayski wrote in 1983: ‘In the light of the flames of the ghetto, where the last fighters were perishing without any distinction of political opinion, the ideological confrontations and the struggle for influence that were dividing the Jewish Resistance in France appeared to all as derisory and in a way an offence to the memory of the insurgents. Coming together thus became an imperious political and moral necessity.’
Thus was created the Jewish Defence Committee in June 1943, with the joint participation of underground organisations of Jews originating from the East who were more aware of the events in Poland: the Federation of Jewish Societies, UJRE, all the Zionist parties, the Bund socialists. In January 1944, the leaders of the Consistory, recognising that the number of victims among French Jews was constantly rising and that the defence of the interests of the Jewish people could not be envisaged outside of the sphere of political action and eventually also accepting the principle of a national Jewish homeland in Palestine, signed the founding charter of CRIF on these grounds. This is why we are organising this ceremony.”
Recalling the Polish Righteous, Dr Prasquier went on to tell the story of “a 98 year old lady living in a retirement home and who is known to all of Poland: Irena Sandler, who under the pseudonym of Jolanta was in charge of the children’s department of the Zegota group and succeeded in helping several hundred Jewish children escape from the Ghetto. Discovered, tortured, sent to die and saved in prison by the Polish resistance, she was proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize this year, but was beaten by Al Gore. Never has a Righteous one received the Nobel Peace Prize, just like Primo Levi who never received the Nobel Literature Prize…
Before concluding, I would like us to meditate on a coincidence: the Warsaw Ghetto uprising began on the 19th of April 1943, on the eve of Easter. That same day, tens of thousands of kilometres from there, in the Bermudas, a conference started between Americans and Englishmen: something had to be done for these refugees, i.e. the Jews. The conference lasted as long as the Ghetto uprising and proved to be a total failure. the Americans were not willing to raise immigration quotas nor did the British accept removing the bans on the White Paper for Palestine. Official American Jewish organisations kept silent and only one marginal group, led by Hillel Kook, who went by the name of Bergson, succeeded in triggering a protest movement which a few months later obliged Roosevelt to set up an Office for Refugees… The extermination of the Jews was not a priority in the grand designs of geostrategy. And this is why, as I close, I pay tribute to another anniversary, the 60 years of existence of the State of Israel.”
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