Paris - One of France's most renowned Holocaust survivors, Simone Veil, on Friday fiercely criticized President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to have older primary school pupils learn the name of French children killed by the Nazis. "At the moment, my blood has turned to ice," the 80-year-old Veil told the website of the weekly L'Express. "It is inconceivable, unbearable, dramatic and, above all, unfair. You can not inflict this on 10-year-old children."
On Wednesday, at a dinner hosted bythe Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), Sarkozy proposed having Education Minister Xavier Darcos draw up a programme in which every French mid-level primary school student would have to learn the name of one of the 11,000 French Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust.
"You cannot demand of a child to identify with a dead child," Veill said. "This remembrance is too heavy to bear. We deportees ourselves had trouble, after the war, talking about what we experienced. And today we try to spare our children and grandchildren."
Veill also said that the proposal risked provoking religious enmity. "How will a very Catholic or Islamic family react when their son or daughter is asked to embody the memory of a young Jew?" she said.
The proposal has provoked objections from some historians and French commentators, but Veill's criticism will be seen as the most damaging yet.
Deported to Auschwitz at the age of 16, Veill eventually held the posts of health minister and social affairs minister in the French government. She became an icon among women for her efforts in having abortion legalized in the country.
She was president of the European Parliament and has been a member of the Constitutional Council since 1998. She surprised many observers when she came out in support of Sarkozy for the 2007 presidential election.
