- PARIS -- The French government
has told schools and colleges to screen films such as Schindler's List,
Sophie's Choice and The Pianist to combat growing anti-Semitism.
-
- After a 10-fold rise in attacks and threats against Jews
in France in the past decade, Luc Ferry, the education minister, said it
was vital to fight racism among young people.
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- "For the first time since the Second World War,
anti-Semitism is now more widespread than racism that is not directed against
Jews," he said last week. "We cannot act as if this didn't exist.
We cannot not respond to it."
-
- The advice is included in a government guide, The Republican
Idea Today, that will be sent to 300,000 schools and colleges teaching
"civil education" classes as part of the national curriculum.
-
- The guide also recommends visits to former Nazi concentration
camps, books such as The Diary of Anne Frank and documentaries depicting
the Holocaust.
-
- Mr Ferry said: "When you see a film like Schindler's
List you are clearly very moved. You understand much better the reality
of racism and anti-Semitism than if you're asked to read, for example,
the Declaration of the Rights of Man."
-
- The government has linked the surge in attacks on Jews
over the past three years with the deteriorating situation in the Middle
East.
-
- Last week, arsonists set fire to a Jewish centre in Toulon,
shortly after Israel assassinated the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
It was the latest in a series of attacks on Jewish sites, including synagogues,
graveyards and lycees.
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- France has the largest Muslim population - estimated
at between 4 million and5 million - in Western Europe.
-
- Mr Ferry said teachers had reported being abused by young
Muslims while trying to teach about the Holocaust. He described how one
teacher asked a class of 13-year-old pupils about their likes and dislikes.
One child wrote: "I like football, I don't like Jews."
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- One prominent rabbi has advised Jewish schoolchildren
in Paris who received abuse and threats from Muslim youths to wear baseball
hats to cover their skullcaps.
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- Mr Ferry said that young people used racist insults such
as "dirty Jew" or "dirty wog" as frequently as other
people said "idiot" or "fool".
-
- He added: "It's extremely serious. These words have
become banal, light as feathers, when in fact they have a very serious
history. The sole purpose of this guide is to give weight back to these
words; to make pupils understand that these insults have killed."
-
- He said the guide was intended to make pupils reflect
on racism, the Second World War, crimes against humanity, battles for the
dignity of man, and social conflicts.
-
- The minister said that extreme racism and anti-Semitism
had infected only five per cent of schools in France, but that in society
as a whole, there had been a dramatic rise in recent years.
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- During the 1990s, about 10 violent anti-Semitic attacks
and 60 verbal threats were reported against Jews every year. By 2002, these
figures had risen to 193 attacks and 731 threats, the worst in France since
the 1940s.
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- Mr Ferry blamed tensions between Muslim and Jewish pupils.
"If we have such a rise in anti-Semitism in France it is because some
children identify with the Palestinian cause and others with Israel,"
he said.
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- The guide also includes details of the laws that teachers
can refer to when confronted with racist acts. "It is necessary to
intervene in the slightest incident - even a verbal attack - and not let
any of these things pass without punishment or explanation," said
Mr Ferry.
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