Controversy in Bergerac after the RN's opposition to the attribution of the name of a Holocaust survivor to a school

RN elected officials in Bergerac (Dordogne) justified on Monday October 5 their recent opposition to a deliberation renaming a school named after Irène Sapir, a Holocaust survivor who became a local communist elected official, by her “political activism”, the person concerned deploring a vote that was not “really republican”.

Last Wednesday, three municipal councilors from the National Rally voted against this decision, which was finally adopted, considering that a school “cannot bear the name of a political activist”, elected from Bergerac from 1967 to 2001 under the colors of the French Communist Party, which they consider to be the “heir of Stalinism”.

Memory work with young people

Irène Sapir, 89, was one of the thousands of Jews arrested in July 1942 during the Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup, before being deported to Auschwitz. Having become a teacher, this survivor testified in educational establishments, including the Bout des Vergnes school to which the Bergerac municipality gave her name. “His memory work with young people deserves respect. This journey is not the subject,” declared Christian Gérard, elected RN aged 26, during the session.

“This gentleman made me sad (...). What he knows about me is that I am a communist and that I am of Jewish origin, that I am a survivor of a filthy massacre. If he was really Republican, he would have voted,” reacted Irène Sapir at the microphone of Ici Périgord radio. “Attempting to disqualify an 89-year-old woman by reducing her existence to her political affiliation is deeply undignified,” reacted PCF senator from Dordogne Marie-Claude Varaillas in a press release.

The PS mayor of Bergerac, Fabien Ruet, castigated the RN as “heir” of a “past that does not pass”, recalling that the National Front, the former name of the party, was founded in particular by former Waffen-SS. “The mayor is engaging in shameful exploitation with the sole aim of ensuring that our elected officials are harassed in the media,” responded the Dordogne RN in a press release sent to AFP on Monday, denouncing the “political activism of Madame Sapir” and describing the accusations of anti-Semitism as “false and slanderous manipulation.”