Transmitting the historical past of the Second World War within the absence of the final witnesses | EUROtoday

Published on : 04/28/2024 – 10:00

Like yearly, the Hélène Boucher highschool, positioned within the twentieth arrondissement in Paris, organizes conferences between witnesses of the Second World War and college students. But for the primary time in 25 years, this occasion takes place with out the presence of former resistance fighters or former deportees.

In the absence of those actors of the Liberation, the scholars can nonetheless meet hidden youngsters, Jewish baby survivors of the Shoah, like Rachel Jedinak, survivor of the Vel d'Hiv roundup. These final witnesses are effectively conscious {that a} web page is being turned. In a short while, they’ll now not be there to inform the youngest about what they skilled.

In faculties, academics are eager about new strategies of transmission. In the nineteenth arrondissement, center college college students took half in a ceremony in tribute to Louise Pikovsky, a Jewish scholar born of their neighborhood and murdered at Auschwitz. To get as shut as potential to his story, they retraced his journey and in addition did some writing work by writing letters for him. This personalization makes it potential to achieve them and arouse their curiosity. Eighty years after her disappearance, the Jewish highschool scholar finds her place in school.