Her most specific action has been the organisation of regular trips to Auschwitz for high school students, whose costs are covered by the Regional Council. The overriding goal of these trips is to give the students a true awareness of the Holocaust; for this purpose, Elisabeth Gourevitch has established a very strict protocol:
- minute preparation is undertaken at the Holocaust Memorial in Paris before departure,
- during the trip, the young people are spread among four groups of around twenty people, each group being accompanied by a Holocaust survivor, a teacher,
- the camp’s “official guides” are systematically backed up by guides from the Memorial,
- after the trip, each young person is required to write a personal report on the visit, and all the testimonies are included in a CD-Rom,
- local politicians, representing the various political parties in the Regional Council, with the exclusion of the National Front, also take part in the trip. Ms Gourevitch is systematically included.
This programme, set up as part of a campaign to promote tolerance, is completed by other provisions. The Young People’s Regional Council, encouraged by the actions of the Vice-President of the Holocaust Memorial, has launched a project on the Rwandan and Armenian genocides, with the support of the Memorial.
Questioned by members of the committee about another focus of CRIF’s action – its support for Israel – Ms Gourevitch mentioned in particular the financial support given to the French Lycée in Jerusalem and her refusal, together with another Regional Council member, Janine Haddad, Vice-President in charge of International Relations, to go to Gaza, which they consider to be a “terrorist” entity since the election of a government supported by Hamas.
English
Français