After the controversy caused by the conditions for organizing a conference on the 30th anniversary of the Israeli-Palestinian agreements in Oslo, the mayor of Lyon sought to restore confidence by making amends, on the occasion of the commemoration of the raid on rue Sainte-Catherine, Sunday, February 12. “I listened to the representatives of the Jewish community. Discussed and taken into account the messages addressed to me. Heard the alarms, the incomprehension and the anger aroused by the initiative that I had taken”, declared Grégory Doucet (Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, EELV).
After the traditional sequence of the calling of the names of 86 teenagers and adults, including the father of the former Keeper of the Seals Robert Badinter, arrested by the Gestapo on February 9, 1943, the Lyonnais councilor was the first to deliver his speech. , in a modified protocol order, as if it were urgent, for the elected ecologist, to dispel misunderstandings as quickly as possible. On January 29, his assistant in charge of memory had been forced to leave the ceremony of the anniversary of the Liberation of the concentration camps, place Bellecour. A large majority of the audience had turned their backs on him, booing his speech, in protest against the tone deemed too pro-Palestinian of the conference planned by the town hall, in the presence of lawyer Salah Hamouri.
No incident of this nature, rue Saint-Catherine, but a denser crowd than usual, sensitive to the slightest nuances of the words spoken, in the presence of Beate and Serge Klarsfeld. ” This initiative [avec l’avocat Salah Hamouri], I chose to cancel it. So as not to take the risk of altering our agreement. It was unbearable for me to imagine that her outfit could damage our friendship or cover with a veil of mistrust the fundamental attachment I have for the work we have been carrying out together since 2020”, explained Mr. Doucet, recalling that he had relaunched the Holocaust memorial project upon his election.
The “sirens of division”
Blocked for twenty years, the project has been the subject of an international architectural competition since the end of January, in order to erect, by the beginning of 2025, a monument in Place Carnot, near the Perrache station, from where convoys bound for concentration and extermination camps. The mayor of Lyon affirms that he wants to be part of the humanist line of his predecessors, citing Michel Noir and Gérard Collomb, going back to Justin Godart, who was among the 80 parliamentarians refusing to give full powers to Marshal Pétain, declared “Righteous Among the Nations” posthumously, for his active role in the rescue of many Jewish families.
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