The dinner of Crif, the representative body of French Jewish institutions, takes place every year in Paris in the presence of politicians, religious leaders, ambassadors,trade unionists, artists….

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne devoted long moments of her moving speech to the annual dinner of Crif, the representative body of French Jewish institutions, to the deportees, including several members of her family and especially her father.

Her father,  Joseph Bornstein, son of Zelig Bornstein from Łuków (Poland), a stateless Jewish refugee who was born in Belgium, then fled to France at the outset of the Second World War. He was active in the French Resistance, and was deported, but survived the Auschwitz concentration camp and death march.

The Prime Minister referred to her father’s suicide, almost 30 years after surviving Auschwitz. She was 11 year old.

“That day, with my grandfather and my uncles, he was arrested by the Gestapo. Then came the leaded wagons, the orders, the beatings, the humiliations. Drancy, Auschwitz. There were 1,250 of them at the beginning. Six returned,” she said;

Among the survivors, “some managed to keep a taste for hope and faith in life. Others have not. I know this only too well,” she continued. She also recounted that “in the months following his return from the camps, (her) father had begun to speak, until he was told that it was better to remain silent. “Some people wanted to put a blanket of silence on the past,” she added, confiding that what had “happened there,” her father had “written it to her in two letters.

Borne addressed an audience of nearly a thousand guests including politicians, ambassadors, religious leaders, trade unionists, artists… who gathered at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris.

The Prime Minister called for “fighting, with all our strength, anti-Semitism, wherever it shows itself, wherever it strikes, wherever it hides.

Elisabeth Borne recalled her wish that “every student in France” make “at least one visit to a place of remembrance during his or her schooling,” which is one of the measures of the plan to fight racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination for the years 2023-2026. The plan was presented three weeks ago.

She also indicated “that during the year 2022, the number of anti-Semitic acts has decreased by more than a quarter compared to 2021”. An allusion to the count recently published by the Crif, based on data from the Jewish Community Protection Service (SPCJ).

“This is progress,” she said, while calling for “continued action.” Specifically, she recalled the measures to help victims file complaints. And pleaded for the establishment of a “single device’’, capable of ensuring both the removal of content online illegal hate content and their judicial treatment.

The president of Crif, Yonathan Arfi, in his speech,  recalled the role of education in the fight “against hatred”. “Anti-Semitism also takes on new faces,” he said, citing in particular “Islamism”, “conspiracy speeches” and “hatred of Israel”. For him, society has, not “an obligation of means but an obligation of result”.

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