Critics Blast Sarkozy's Holocaust School Plan

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. (More Nicolas Sarkozy stories.)