“It was a deafening calm, a screaming calm”

It is a series of attacks that marked France: the attacks perpetrated by Mohammed Merah in March 2012: seven people were killed by the Islamist terrorist. First three soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban. Then three Jewish children and the father of two of them in front of the Jewish school Ozar Hatorah, in the Roseraie district. March 19, 2022 marks 10 years since this attack, which marked a turning point in the recent history of terrorism.

Ozar Hatorah is actually a college-high school that welcomes children from 6th to 12th grade. More of 140 young people are educated there. Figure which fell after the attack: they were around 200 in 2012.

An establishment struck by barbarism

Unfortunately, the attack shed light on this discreet establishment in the Roseraie district. He had never been talked about until that terrible day: March 19, 2012.

Mohammed Merah arrives on his scooter and kills in a few seconds a teacher, Jonathan Sandler aged 30, his two sons Arié 6 years old and Gabriel 3 and a half years old, as well as Myriam Monsonego, 8 and a half years old, the daughter of the director of Ozar Hatorah.

The four victims were there because they had to take a shuttle to go to Gan Rashi, an elementary school based in the Minimes district. Erick Lebahr arrived just after the killing. That day, he was dropping off his 13-year-old daughter at college: “We arrived a minute after the tragedy. My daughter was a little late, she didn’t like her shirt, she wanted to change it at the last moment and it might be that minute that saved us. So we arrived and _we saw elongated bodies. I did not understand_, I thought maybe there had been a fight and they were knocked out. I told my daughter to get on her stomach, stay in the car and I got out to see. And then I understood right away. We waited like that for long minutes. It was endless. Ten minutes of astonishment. What was paradoxical was this deafening calm. But it was not a normal calm. It was deafening calm, a calm full of anger, full of rage. In fact, it was a howling calm. »

Erick Lebahr remembers the hours that followed: “ We went home and my daughter went up to her room to say a little prayer. Then she came back down and she said to me _‘Dad, I’ll ask you one thing: promise me we’ll never talk about this again_. I told her ‘Okay, my daughter, no problem’ And it’s true that ten years have passed and we have never talked about it for a single second. What we both experienced was too strong. There were haggard looks, we couldn’t formulate, to verbalize what we had seen. The state of amazement was really too strong. » Erick Lebahr’s daughter knew little Myriam well. They arrived every morning at the same time in front of the establishment: “ Myriam was her mascot: she used to give him a hug every morning. »

A resumption of classes three days after the attack

Classes resumed very quickly, in accordance with the will of Yaacov Monsonego, the director of Ozar Hatorah. Laurent Raynaud was already Director of Studies at the establishment in 2012: “The day after the attack, there was a meeting with our director, Mr. Monsonego. Despite the terrible ordeal he had just undergone, he found the strength to tell us that we had to continue, to be there for the children. Everything had fallen apart for us. We didn’t really know how it was going to turn out. But on Thursday, we resumed classes. There had been many psychologists and nurses from the Academy. We resumed gently, because the students needed to talk. But little by little, the school started up again, with the children as a priority. »

An establishment that is now called Ohr Torah

A few months after the events, the school changed its name: it is now called Ohr Torah, which means the light of the Torah. This change has nothing to do with the attack. It is an administrative reason, a change of guardianship planned long before the attack.

Today, in the corridors, students laugh, heckle and tease each other like in any middle school or high school. Since the attack, the walls have been raised. There are barbed wire around the establishment, surveillance cameras, a permanent guard at the entrance. But once inside, life fully resumed. And it’s a kind of snub to terrorism for Laurent Raynaud: “Those who did this wanted to arrest us. They wanted to destroy everything. But for ten years, what’s been happening here is the opposite of destruction. It is the construction, the construction of many things, of many values. That’s what you have to remember. _Nothing stopped here, on the contrary: it gave a lot of strength to a lot of people._»

In the schoolyard, there is now a tree of life. A large metallic sculpture that bears four colored flowers and the names of the four victims killed at the school.

A turning point for the Jewish community

The attack contributed to reinforcing the feeling of insecurity felt by the Jewish community of Toulouse. Erick Lebahr’s daughter has, for example, make aliyah when she turned 18: a Hebrew term for the act ofimmigrate to israel. Half of the students in his class followed this trajectory after the baccalaureate. A movement that Erick Lebahr had not anticipated: “We didn’t expect it at all. Of course, it existed before, but it was totally marginal. _Before, the people who made this choice, we looked at them a bit like UFOs_. And then, suddenly, there were all these departures: it was dizzying. But looking back, I think when you experience such a strong trauma, at a certain moment, you have to leave : helps to evacuate it. »

According to estimates, the Jewish community of Toulouse would have lost one third of its members since the 1990s.

Ten years after the attack, Erick Lebahr delivers a personal analysis on the prospects for reconstruction: “Ten years after, we can take a fresh look at this event. We can say to ourselves that in the end, we didn’t get stuck in an eternal status of victims. We moved forward, we moved forward. And even if this event remains anchored in our minds, we have evolved. That doesn’t prevent us from having fragments of happiness, from being happy despite everything. It is true that the flashes come back from time to time. There is no acceptance, but there is a will to overcome, to transcend this event and to say that finally, _we are stronger than barbarism._“