French athletes at Auschwitz-Birkenau to raise awareness of anti-Semitism in the sports community

0

Around thirty athletes were received in the Polish concentration and extermination camp on Sunday, at the initiative of the CRIF. A trip marked by the absence of certain athletes.

Published


Update


Reading time: 2 min

For the first time, a delegation visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, passing under the infamous entrance gate. (JEROME VAL / FRANCEINFO)

An unprecedented trip took place on Sunday January 14 to Auschwitz, Poland. A delegation of athletes and former athletes visited the site where the Nazi regime erected its largest concentration and extermination camp. An initiative from the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif) to mobilize the sports movement against anti-Semitism, a few months before the Paris Olympic Games.

“It’s gut-wrenching”

Long silences broken by the icy wind and footsteps in a thick layer of snow. In Birkenau, words struggle to get out, as with former rugby player Philippe Sella: “I’m… thoughtful… about what madness… there was in the story. It’s hard to hear, it’s gut-wrenching.” The wooden barracks, the collapsed walls of a gas chamber. Richard Dacoury, basketball legend in Limoges and godfather of this trip, has his face frozen in front of the horror of this vast cemetery without a grave.

“I expected to be moved, it’s beyond what I had imagined. We discovered the unimaginable and I will have a repercussion, in a few days perhaps before I assimilate everything.”

Richard Dacoury

at franceinfo

Like them, around thirty athletes made the trip to Poland, and took part in a ceremony in memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis. This trip was to be organized last fall but the war in the Middle East forced Crif to postpone it.

The “unacceptable” absence of certain athletes

The important thing about this trip is that it “takes place”, explains its president Yonathan Arfi. But of the thirty athletes present, only one is still active. Cyril Benzaquen will indeed compete in a kickboxing world championship in less than a month: “I regret that athletes who are still active are not aware that doing this, when they are in contact with young people, can have an impact.”

The thirty athletes present attended a ceremony in tribute to the Jewish victims of the camps; (JEROME VAL / FRANCEINFO)

When this group was formed, there were refusals from athletes. Unacceptable, annoys Mickael Jérémiaz, former disabled tennis player, part of whose family was decimated at Auschwitz:“The younger generation, said to be more exposed, that of social networks, those who have international, mixed communities, of all faiths, many of them have withdrawn! Some out of fear, some out of cowardice, others perhaps also by conviction…” An absence and questions that had already been brought to light on November 12, during the march for the Republic and against anti-Semitism.


source site-29