10 years after the Toulouse attack, “a wound that does not heal”, according to the rabbi of Bordeaux
He will be, on Sunday March 20, at the ceremony organized in Toulouse to pay tribute to the victims of Mohamed Merah, alongside 2,000 people, including Emmanuel Macron, François Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the recalled president Isaac Herzog. 10 years ago, the rabbi of Bordeaux, Moïse Taïeb paid tribute to the great synagogue of Bordeaux to the victims of the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse. A Bordeaux family had been decimated, since Jonathan Sandler, 30, and his children Gabriel, 3, and Arié, 6, were killed by the terrorist Mohamed Merah, like the young Myriam Monsonégo, 8 years old.
Ten years after the attack on the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, the memory is still very strong?
In our community, of course. Within the framework of society, ten years later, there were other attacks which were also very serious, which affected the whole of society. And there is always this threat of terrorism, of Islamism that we must constantly fight.
Do you remember what you were doing on March 19, 2012?
At the time, I was in the Paris region and I was in charge of a school. And we learned about it on the news when parents were starting to drop off their children at school. First there was panic. Won’t there be another shock, other attacks in other schools?
And then afterwards, there was the ceremony that took place here, in Bordeaux. In a few hours, since it had been announced in the morning for the evening, there were several hundred people who came to the synagogue to pay homage. Because they were children, because he was a dad, because death had struck in the most abject way possible, in a place that should normally be sanctuary.
It must have been even more moving in Bordeaux, because the adult assassinated by Mohamed Merah, Jonathan Sandler, was from Bordeaux.
Of course. The Sandler family was known in Bordeaux and Jonathan taught there at the synagogue, as part of our house of studies. And besides, since then, the main room is dedicated to him. When I teach, I teach in the Jonathan-Sandler room.
He took care of the young people, so the young people and the parents remembered him. So in Bordeaux as in Toulouse, there is always a cheek that does not close.
These commemorations, ten years this weekend. are necessary ? Or is it just rubbing the knife in the wound?
They are hard, therefore. But at the same time, it is important to take booster shots from time to time, because this struggle is not over. And then, in the Jewish tradition, as long as we talk about someone, he remains alive for us. Finally, why on cries? Not for the victims, but for what they might have done.
Commemorating is essential for memory
If Jonathan Sandler had lived ten more years, lived a normal life, he would have continued to teach, to train many students. One of his children would have done his bar mitzvah a few months ago. That’s what we cry about, about what we couldn’t have, what was taken away from us. So commemorating is essential for memory, for educational work, for transmission. And above all that such things do not happen again.
And ten years later, do you think these things can happen again?
Unfortunately, we still fear.