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Les Enfants et Amis AbadiPreserving the memory of Odette and Moussa Abadi and keeping alive the memory of the Shoah

THE BEIT PROJECT

February 11, 2024

The Beit Project continues its mission across France, Europe and the seas to fight racism, social exclusion and discrimination. In this spirit, Lucy Winckelmann, her team and David Stoleru invited me in November 2023 to the town hall of the 10th arrondissement for the presentation of pupils’ work produced in the Buisson Saint-Louis neighbourhood of Paris. Five secondary schools were represented, as well as the IME Suzanne Cordes.

THE BEIT PROJECT

A project carried out from November 6 to 1 December 2023

PARIS – 10th arrondissement

with the schools:
Collège de la Grange aux Belles
Collège Germaine Tillion
Collège Pierre-Jean de Béranger
IME Suzanne Cordes
Collège Jean-Baptiste Clément
Collège Albert Schweitzer

The school project welcomed:

The editing sessions took place at the following schools (which hosted the other groups on their premises): Jean-Baptiste Clément, Grange aux Belles and Béranger.

The final presentation took place on January 11, 2024 at the town hall (wedding room). During the presentation we showed a making-of of the project and a selection of 6 films (out of the 36 made).

Interviews with passers-by, the assembly of the “house”, films and pupils’ comments were presented to the many families who came. The children were proud, and the room buzzed with a joyful murmur.

As a reminder, I would like to copy here the presentation I made in November 2020 when I took part in the project organised by the Beit Project.

Beit Project – days of 9/November 12, 2020

The Beit Project? It is a European project: “the concept is to set up a ‘nomadic classroom’ in a place rich in traces of the past, recent or distant. For two days per group, pupils from two very different schools get to know each other and learn to work together. Around an ephemeral, nomadic school, they make a neighbourhood their own, working on traces of the past, social issues and video-making. The key idea of the project is to use the city and its history to debate the major contemporary issues of living together and fighting discrimination, in order to build a common future. It aims to make young people aware of plurality and cultural diversity through discovering and interpreting heritage sites linked to the history, distant or recent, of their city.”

That is how David Stoleru, who created this concept, described his project to me. For some years now, the Beit has gradually come closer to the story of Odette and Moussa: in 2017 around the 10th and 12th arrondissements of Paris, in March 2018 in Nice, and in November 2020 with pupils from the Collège Albert Schweitzer in Créteil in partnership with the Collège Sainte-Élisabeth in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. I had the great pleasure of taking part in a day in November with the Créteil pupils.

Lockdown did not allow these pupils to go to the 15th, nor those from that arrondissement to explore Créteil, but the two schools exchanged videos to explore, among other places, the traces of the Vel d’Hiv, the Eiffel Tower and the banner “Here we drown Algerians”. Divided into several groups, the pupils were able to consult many documents on the subjects they chose and move around the whole school, questioning in turn the library staff, a history teacher, an administrator… Turning into camera operators, they filmed and enjoyed being able to use a camera; I also answered their questions.