Some three hundred middle school students from the Jean Rostand, Jules Romain, Sainte-Thérèse, Roland Garros, Louis Nucéra, Alphonse Daudet, the International Center of Valbonne, Kerem Enarem, Or Torah, and Moriah Apeda schools will gather in the amphitheater of the C.U.M to hear the message delivered by Mr. Elie Wiesel: “instead of denying despair or avoiding it, we must push it to its limits, and well beyond, in order to transform it into a powerful and irresistible call for hope.”
Some young students, as well as Mr. Charles Gotlieb, a survivor of the Auschwitz camp, will be invited to read key passages from the speech given by Mr. Wiesel in Oslo, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize on December 11, 1986: “Hope, Despair, and Memory.” It should be noted that most of these middle school students have participated in the Memory Journeys organized by the General Council from December 4, 2008, to March 19, 2009. The first journeys were initiated in 2003 by the Department, with the assistance of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, for all middle school students from Alpes-Maritimes.
Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1986, Elie Wiesel is an unconditional defender of freedom, a value that continually motivates his literary work through his novels: “A Mad Desire to Dance,” “The Forgotten,” “The Sonderberg Case,” or essays such as “To Remain Silent is Impossible,” “Where Are You From?” and plays like “Zalmen or the Madness of God,” “The Trial of Shamgorod.”
Deported to Auschwitz at only 15 years old, he is the only survivor of his family at Liberation. He has set himself a goal: “to speak the unspeakable” in order to better combat it.
