Meeting at the Romainville primary school (Paris 19th)
June 2, 2021
Do you know the primary school in rue de Romainville in Paris 19th? It is a school that one would like to be the rule rather than the exception, so passionately, enthusiastically and professionally does its head teacher, Madame Gonzalez, approach her work.
I was asked to give my testimony, and it was again (yes, for the second time) wearing my two hats – LICRA and Abadi Child – that I went to the school on May 10, 2021 to talk about Odette and Moussa Abadi. I met two final-year primary classes, those of Mrs Vanessa Lucas and Mr Dimitri Schlesinger. I was accompanied by Hélène Bougniol, head of the Education Commission for the Île-de-France region, and by Audrey, also from LICRA.
My “Abadi Child” hat, to talk about the Hidden Children saved thanks to the courage of two young people, Odette Rosenstock and Moussa Abadi, both Jewish, who chose to resist in defiance of the anti-Jewish laws that targeted them like all Jews. Despite their courage, they could never have saved the 527 children who were lucky enough to cross their path without the help of Monseigneur Rémond and of Pastors Gagnier and Evrard. Monseigneur Rémond opened to them the doors of all the religious boarding schools of the diocese and gave Moussa an office at the bishop’s house. Pastors Gagnier and Evrard approached Protestant families, while Odette sought out certain public institutions, such as the preventorium in Grasse or the Maison des Enfants in Cannes. In all these places, children in danger found people willing to hide them.
It is this story that I wanted to tell, to plunge into the past and bring this memory to life. Memory of the facts, memory of heroes who remained anonymous (for none of them said anything after the war), memory of solidarity. Forget nothing, pass it on. But pass on too the values of fraternity, mutual aid, secularism and the fight against all forms of discrimination, which have not aged – concepts inseparable from our talks on behalf of LICRA.
I was impressed by the pupils’ attention, concentration and interest in the Marcel network.
The afternoon continued in the same spirit of passing on, recalling the memory of seven pupils of this school who were deported. Their names were read by other, deeply moved children, who in turn recited sentences by writers: Paul Éluard, Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie, Robert Desnos, and Louis Aragon in a text about Missak Manouchian. When I add Marianne Cohn, Simone Veil and Nelson Mandela, you will understand that the message was Resistance and Humanism.
A young boy, with a clear and moving trumpet, introduced the “Chant des Partisans”, taken up in chorus by all the children under the musical direction of the singing teacher, Mrs Catherine Lharbe.
The Mayor of the 19th arrondissement, Mr François Dagnaud, congratulated them and encouraged them to continue reflecting, referring to the text of the plaque:
In memory of the pupils of this school deported from 1942 to 1944
Because they were born Jewish, innocent victims of Nazi barbarity
With the active complicity of the Vichy government
They were exterminated in the death camps
Andrée Poch-Karsenti