On this very special day, about a hundred people, representatives of the Jewish community of Nice, local authorities, and multi-faith religious figures participated in the annual Holocaust remembrance ceremony at the Jewish section of the Château cemetery in Nice.
Understandably, the time was one of reflection in memory of the 3,612 deportees from the region, almost all of whom perished in the furnaces of the Holocaust.
This is what Daniel Wancier, president of the Committee for Yad Vashem of Nice and the Côte d’Azur, wanted to highlight: “The memory of the Holocaust will always remain an important element to ensure the continuity of the Jewish people. In a world that too often advocates collective amnesia to avoid its responsibilities, we must instead encourage fidelity to memory and consideration of the lessons of the past.”
Yad Vashem is the commemorative institute of the Heroes and Martyrs of the Holocaust. The Knesset law that established Yad Vashem in 1953 specifies that one of its missions is to document the catastrophe to study and disseminate the history of the Holocaust.
Simone Veil, who was deported from Nice with her family, said about Yad Vashem: “A people without memory is a people without a future! They may be led to repeat the same mistakes of the past!”
The ceremony in Nice took place on the same day as in all the cities of the world where a Jewish community is present: it is the day of transmitting the memory of this human tragedy, perpetrated by “men against men” (for memory: 6 million dead, including 1.5 million young people and children).
In the face of the enormity of the tragedy, the words spoken by the official speakers (Patrick Allemand representing the PACA Region, Eric Ciotti the General Council of the Alpes-Maritimes, and Daniel Benchimol the City of Nice) did not go beyond their formal meaning.
To conclude this ceremony, after the prayer and the song of the Jewish partisans, which evoked the revolt of the Warsaw ghetto (“a fight with unequal weapons, doomed from the start but fought for honor”), six candles, symbolizing the 6 million dead, were lit by deportees or their descendants, and the names of the young people and children from Nice who died were read in an almost deafening silence.
Psalm 129/2 says: “They have persecuted us, but they have not defeated us.”
We modestly allow ourselves to add: “They are dead but they still live in the memory of our hearts.”
