“For us, every day is 10 years”, recalls Eva Sandler
She buried a husband and two infant sons. And still finds the strength to carry their message. Eva Sandler, born Alloul, is a resilience model who impressed his entourage from the first hours of this unbearable drama, capable of comforting those collapsing around. On March 19, 2012, after killing three soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban, her husband and her two little boys aged six and three and a half die under the bullets of the terrorist, with the daughter of the director of Ozar Hatorah, the young Myriam Monsonégo.
After several years in the shadows, Eva Sandler reappears sporadically. Carried by the breath of life of her daughter Liora, the third Sandler child, by the new family she founded in Israel and by the memory of Jonathan, Arie and Gabriel. Frédéric Métézeau, the Radio France correspondent in Jerusalem, met her at the end of February in Jerusalem in a synagogue in the Bayt Vegan district where a ceremony was organized in tribute to the victims of the March 2012 attacks in Toulouse.
Do these ten years have any meaning for you?
For us, every day is ten years. I wanted to organize a bigger event for this year and Mr. Sandler (editor’s note, Samuel, Jonathan’s father, present at this ceremony in Jerusalem at the end of February) told me no. If we make it bigger for the ten years, that would mean that for the seven or eight years, we had the right to forget them, that the eleventh year, we will also have the right to forget them. For us, the family, it stays with us, it’s on a daily basis. Whether it is a day, a week or a month, the pain is just as intense. Nevertheless, I keep talking about them. I continue to carry their message. I created an association (note, the association Beth Sandler) in their memory and it’s my way of fighting and keeping people talking about them.
Whether it’s one day or ten years later, the pain is still just as intense.
Which man was Jonathan?
Jonathan (editor’s note, who was a rabbi and teacher at Ozar Hatorah) wanted to transmit the values of the Torah, this is the path he had chosen. As a father and as a husband, he was very, very caring. A lovely man, a very good father, a very good husband. And as a teacher, he was full of kindness and very intelligent, very cultured, he liked to study and transmit. He was truly grateful for what had been done for him. And as he had learned a lot in Toulouse, it was there that he had reinforced his Judaism, he chose to return there to teach there, to retransmit everything he had learned, out of gratitude.
He was very attached to this city and this school Ozar Hatorah (came in 2013 Ohr Torah)?
Yes, it helped him a lot and he did everything to make the Torah accessible to everyone, whether related to current events, to philosophy. Jonathan always had the gift of combining Torah and philosophy, culture, news. He absolutely wanted to show that the Torah was rich and beautiful, that it was accessible to everyone.
With tragedies as appalling as the one you experienced, families could have exploded. Jonathan’s father is there by your side, your family has remained united…
For me, as for them, it was obvious that throughout our lives, we would remain united, we would be united and we would continue to share the names, the memory, the memory of Jonathan, Arié and Gabriel. Always together, solid, united and welded to continue this work of memory.
Jonathan Sandler and his sons deposited in the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem, as was Myriam Monsonégo.