Grégory Doucet underlines his “fundamental attachment” to the memory of the Shoah, on the occasion of the commemoration of the Rafle of rue Sainte-Catherine.
by Richard Schittly (Lyon, correspondent)
After the controversy caused by the conditions of organization of a conference out of the 30 years of the Israeli-Palestinian agreements of Oslo, the mayor of Lyon sought to restore confidence by making amends, on the occasion of The commemoration of the Rafle on rue Sainte-Catherine, Sunday February 12. “I listened to the representatives of the Jewish community. Discussed and taken into account the messages which were sent to me. Heard the alarms, the misunderstanding and the anger aroused by the initiative I had taken,” said Grégory Doucet (Europe Ecologie-les Verts, EELV).
After the traditional sequence of the call of the names of the 86 adolescents and adults, including the father of the former Keeper of the Seals Robert Badinter, arrested by the Gestapo on February 9, 1943, the Lyonnais councilor was the first in Pronounce his speech, in a modified protocol order, as if there was an emergency, for the elected environmentalist, to dissipate the misunderstandings as quickly as possible. On January 29, his assistant in charge of memory had been pushed to leave the anniversary of the Liberation of concentration camps, place Bellecour. A large majority of the assistance had turned his back on him by hooking his speech, as a sign of protest against the tone deemed too propalely of the conference envisaged by the town hall, in the presence of the lawyer Salah Hamouri.
No incident of this nature, rue Saint-Catherine, but a more dense crowd than usual, sensitive to the smallest nuances of the words pronounced, in the presence of Beate and Serge Klarsfeld. “This initiative [with the lawyer Salah Hamouri], I chose to cancel it. So as not to take the risk of altering our agreement. It was unbearable to imagine that his outfit could come and damage our friendship or Covering with a veil of distrust the fundamental attachment that I have for the work that we are carrying out together since 2020, “said Doucet, recalling that he had relaunched from his election the MEMORIAL project of the Shoah.
“sirens of the division”
Blocked for twenty years, the project has been the subject of an international architectural competition since the end of January, in order to erect, by early 2025, a monument Place Carnot, near Perrache station, D ‘Where did convoys left for concentration and extermination camps. The mayor of Lyon claims that he wants to register in the humanist line of his predecessors, quoting Michel Noir and Gérard Collomb, going up to Justin Godart, who was among the 80 parliamentarians refusing to give full powers to Marshal Pétain, Declared “just among the nations” posthumously, for its active role in the rescue of many Jewish families.
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