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Historical Documentation Notice

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France tells its
schools to screen Schindlers List and The Piano to
combat a rising tide of anti-Semitism

By Kim Willsher in
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.

David
Irving comments:

THUS the real purpose of the making of Schindler’s List, the film version of a rather tawdry and pornographic novel, becomes plain. Not long after it was released, I published in Action Report a quotation from the German cinematographer’s trade magazine, Der
Kinema (I think it was called), in which the chief cameraman on the film declared that the reason why the film had been made

in black & white was so that in future people could not tell whether or not it was a documentary. Instant History,
Nescafé style: pour on hot water and stir. Before the belated
United States entry into World War Two, a series of movie shorts called Time
Marches On was produced by Hollywood.
They served their purpose too.

A BBC television investigation ten years or so ago revealed that all of the scenes of
Nazi brown shirts brutalizing Jews, forcing them to scrub pavements, etc., and of Japanese troops tossing Chinese children into the air on their bayonets, had been filmed with actors on the backlots of Hollywood. The problem for France’s Jewish community is that the public are not, in their entirety, idiots: most Frenchmen can read the press and see the real newsreels for themselves now — and there is

the
Internet. Not a thousand re-runs of Schindler’s List can expunge the world’s worst memories — like the image of an Israeli bulldozer crushing to death the beautiful young American girl
Rachel
Corrie trying to protect an Arab home from illegal demolition in March 2003; nor the memory of the Israeli
Army’s tower crane in Manger

Square in
Bethlehem two years ago, rigged with a remote-controlled machine gun at its top with which they could fire bursts of machine-gun fire through a window into the
Interior of the Church of the Nativity, birthplace of Our Lord, the holiest church in Christendom.
One
Year Later, Justice Still Not Served:
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
We wonder if her family has become “anti-Semitic” yet?

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.

“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 lycées.

France has the largest Muslim population —
estimated at between 4 million and 5 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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.© Copyright of
Telegraph Group Limited 2004.

Source Information
Original Publication: 2004-03-28
Digital Archive: Focal Point Publications
Accessed: June 3, 2026