Thursday, January 3, 2008
Sarkozy
A friend of mine send me this article today from the Australian Jewish News (yes, virginia, there is a niche publication everywhere for everything). During the recent election in France, there was no fuss or even mention of it - that I saw, anyway - but France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, apparently has a Jewish heritage. His mother belongs to the Mallah family from Salonika (Greece) who, in the 15th century, escaped the Spanish Inquisition (good for them!) and emigrated to Provence, France before proceeding to Salonika. Many of the family members hid in Marcillac la Croisille in the Corrèze region, western France, during World War II but many Mallahs who stayed in Salonika or moved to France fare far worse. In fact, 57 family members were murdered in concentration camps including one, Buena Mallah, who was the subject of medical "experiments" in Birkenau. In any case, this makes Sarkozy's victory last Spring seem particularly beneficial for France. To have elected a Jewish man as president merely half a century after Vichy's (at best dubious and at worst complicitous) acquiescence to the Nazis is remarkable. Good for them. (And, by the way, if you are ever in Paris, be sure to go to the the Deportation / Holocaust Memorial behind Notre Dame, on the Ile de Cite. It's the simplest, quietest memorial or museum I've ever seen and, perhaps as a result, is deeply moving.)
Labels: france, good ideas, politics
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