Question: Has CRIF got political leanings?
Richard Prasquier: CRIF does not take sides in the political debate in France. It is quite obvious that since all CRIF members are French citizens, they each hold and express their own political opinions. The only guidelines CRIF gave during the presidential election were not to vote for the extremist parties.
CRIF is not a political organisation. It intervenes in politics to represent members of the French Jewish community.
Q: Does CRIF represent all Jews in France?
RP: I am not sure that all Jews in France feel that they are represented by the President of CRIF, which is nothing unusual. For example, we have trade union representatives who speak for all workers, although only 8% of workers, I believe, actually belong to the unions. Besides, the last thing I want is for CRIF to be a movement of "the Jews" in France, because that would mean that we were totally in what the French call "communautarisme". [Translator's note: This is turning inwards to one's own community, and can be very roughly translated "ghetto mentality"]. This is not at all the way I want CRIF to go.
Q: Is the Jewish community turning in on itself at the moment?
RP: I make a clear distinction between community and "communautarisme". What is commonly known as turning inwards to one's identity, "communautarisme", is often a reaction to events, and I find it terribly sad. But many parents are afraid for their children, who have sometimes been attacked or picked on because they are Jewish. However, almost half of all Jewish pupils who go to private schools are in private Catholic schools. This shows that the phenomenon is not just due to inward-looking "communautarisme".
Q: Do you agree with your predecessor Roger Cukierman that the French foreign policy is incompatible with its policy to control anti-Semitism?
RP: French foreign policy is made in France. It is not up to us to dictate French foreign policy. But as French citizens, we must give our opinion about it, and I will do so. For many years, we have had the feeling that there was an inconsistency in France. On the one hand, Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic, and the French government had a policy of zero tolerance of anti-Semitism, and a strong desire to revive the memory of the Holocaust. And on the other hand, there was French foreign policy.
Q: Nicolas Sarkozy said he wanted "to put an end to the repentance culture". What do you think about this, given Jacques Chirac's speech in 1995 on the responsibility of the crimes of the Vichy regime?
RP: Jacques Chirac's 1995 speech is a founding statement, which later made it possible to acknowledge the acts of the many French people who helped save Jews during the war, because over two thirds of the French Jewish community was able to avoid deportation. It was then possible to hold the magnificent ceremony in January 2007 in the Pantheon, in which the just of France were honoured. From this point of view, France has done a remarkable, complete and gradual job, which has taken a long time and which began very belatedly.
It is vital that the memory of the Holocaust and all we have learned from the Holocaust should continue. Now we need to think about the best way of teaching young people, particularly because the younger generations are changing and the number of survivors who can testify to their experience is decreasing. We also need to think about how this memory can change behaviour.
The most important thing is to safeguard the culture of history and the desire to let the true facts speak. I think that a country that recognises truth always grows, even if it recognises that at a moment in its past its behaviour has not been within the moral limits that we would want.
I am not personally a Holocaust victim. Being a victim is not passed down from father to son. My role is to make history live.
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