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French president’s plan to tell 10-year-olds of holocaust

Monday, 18 February 2008

French president’s plan to tell 10-year-olds of holocaust

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is reported to be sticking with his plan of getting every 10-year-old schoolchild in France to know about and to honour the Jewish child victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

However, French teachers and parents were among people who didn’t agree with his idea, to which Nicolas Sarkozy, who was speaking in the French town of Perigueux, responded: "We do not traumatise children by giving them the gift of the memory of the country."

An estimated 11,000 Jewish children died in France during the Nazi occupation in the war.

President Sarkozy added: "We must tell a child the truth. If you do not talk to them of this tragedy, then you should not be surprised if it repeats itself. It is ignorance that prompts the repetition of abominable situations, not knowledge."

Those who were in disagreement with President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan said that children aged ten were too young to cope with the disturbing information they would be taught and that it could cause them psychological harm.

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