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Critics Blast Sarkozy's Holocaust School Plan

Prez wants each 5th grader to study a victim

By Wesley Oliver,  Newser Staff

Posted Feb 16, 2008 12:53 PM CST
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(Newser) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy has sparked a new controversy: The maverick leader is  now defending his plan to have every fifth grader study a French youth killed in the Holocaust. Critics, including Jewish analysts, warn the move could traumatize students. But one historian applauded Sarkozy's "courage" and said what children "see on television or in a horror film is much worse."

The students would be “entrusted with the memory of a French child-victim of the Holocaust,” Sarkozy said, but one philosopher called the plan “truly obscene" and added, “Every day the president throws out a new unhappy idea with no coherence.” Critics also blasted Sarkozy’s religious defense of the plan as a threat to France's church-state divide, the New York Times reports.

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy looks at photos of deported Jews in Europe during WW II, during his visit to the Shoah Memorial, or Holocaust Memorial in Paris last year. Sarkozy on Friday defended a plan to require 10-year-olds to honor child victims of the Holocaust, saying adults should not hide...
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy looks at photos of deported Jews in Europe during WW II, during his visit to the Shoah Memorial, or Holocaust Memorial in Paris last year. Sarkozy on Friday defended...   (Associated Press)
President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday defended a plan to require 10-year-olds to honor child victims of the Holocaust, saying adults should not hide terrible truths from children, the AP reports. We must tell a child the truth, he said. We do not traumatize children by giving them the gift of...
President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday defended a plan to require 10-year-olds to honor child victims of the Holocaust, saying adults should not hide terrible truths from children, the AP reports. "We must...   (Associated Press)
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's rankled psychologists worried about traumatizing youth and has teachers reviving debates about how France remembers World War II. But Sarkozy stood firmly by the plan in meetings with teachers over proposed reforms of France's school system, the AP reports. (AP Photo/vadim Ghirda)
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's rankled psychologists worried about traumatizing youth and has teachers reviving debates about how France remembers World War II. But Sarkozy stood firmly by the plan...   (Associated Press)
French Education Minister Xavier Darcos, right, explained later that the aim of Sarkozy's plan was to create an identification between a child of today and one of the same age who was deported and gassed. (AP Photo/Patrick Kovarik, pool)
French Education Minister Xavier Darcos, right, explained later that the aim of Sarkozy's plan was to "create an identification between a child of today and one of the same age who was deported and gassed."...   (Associated Press)
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education • Israel • Holocaust • Nicolas Sarkozy • France • Jews • religion • Nazi • Catholicism • separation of church and state • anti-Semitism • French schools

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