Against anti-Semitism and racism, sport also has “a role to play”, particularly with “younger generations.”
This was the message of Sunday’s unprecedented trip by a French sports delegation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, ahead of this year Olympic Games in Paris.
“We’re going to spend six hours in the camp, which is more than most of the people who were deported there”: with this stark reminder that 80% of arrivals were sent straight to the gas chambers, the guide sets the tone, on the coach taking the twenty athletes and federation officials (boxing, basketball) to the largest extermination camp built by the Nazis, in southern Poland.
Over a hundred people of all origins and faiths took part in this day of remembrance, exchange and meditation.
This trip, a first in this Olympic year, is intended to be “part of a logic of transmission”, explained Yonathan Arfi, President of Crif, the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, underlining the importance of sporting values “in the fight against anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred”.
Léon Lewkowicz, former deportee and French weightlifting champion, accompanied the delegation and spoke to them throughout the day.
The morning was devoted to a visit to Birkenau, – and ended with a ceremony of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust. Yonathan Arfi opened the ceremony, recalling the reasons why Crif organizes this day of remembrance every year. Six candles were lit in memory of the six million Jews killed. The ceremony concluded with Olivier Kaufmann, Chief Rabbi of the Place des Vosges synagogue, reciting the prayer for the lost, El Male Rahamim as well as the Kaddish and sounding the Chofar.
The trip was originally scheduled for late November, but was postponed after the 0ctober 7 Hamas terror attacks against Israel, followed by the Israeli army’s operation in Gaza against the terrorist group.
Since then, some participants withdrew, lamented Pierre Fraidenraich, chairman of Crif’s sports commission. “For some, it was linked to their image: they didn’t want to be associated, as if this trip was a pro-Israeli act”.
However, the approach is intended to be “humanistic and educational”, certainly “not political”, explained Richard Dacoury, sponsor of the trip, who is alarmed to see society “sliding towards ever more violence, racism and anti-Semitism”.