“Everything must be done so that it does not happen again”, says a leader of the Ohr Torah school
“We have to do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again” and so that the Jewish community in Toulouse “to feel safe”, declared Laurent Raynaud, director of studies at the Ohr Torah school in Toulouse (formerly Ozar Hatorah school), on Sunday March 20 on franceinfo, the day of commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the attacks in Toulouse and Montauban. Emmanuel Macron will participate in the ceremonies in tribute to the seven people murdered by Mohamed Merah, including four in this Jewish school: Myriam Monsonego, 7 years old, Gabriel Sandler, 3 years old, Arié Sandler, 6 years old, and his father Jonathan Sandler.
franceinfo: Ten years later, what is the state of mind of the Jewish community in Toulouse today? What is she waiting for?
Laurent Raynaud: In my opinion, we must take all possible measures to make them feel safe and want to stay in their country, France. We have to do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I will take the example of the regional action plan for Occitania, whose slogan is “discrimination, racism, anti-Semitism, we are talking about it”. I do think we need to talk about it. It shouldn’t be a taboo subject.
What about school security today?
The school is very, very protected, even if this protection means that inside, when you return, you are like in a normal school. Outside, it is true that there are very important measures, and that reassures us.
One victim’s father, Myriam Monsonego, still runs the school. What message are you sending him?
Mr. Monsonego, and I also associated his wife, made the choice to remain at the head of this school and, by their speech and by their example, gave us lessons of life. Since then, they have “built” many children. They did not integrate them into hatred, they integrated them into our universal values, into the Republic. They trained them to become men and women who understand the world.
The attacks in Toulouse and Montauban were, in a way, a prelude to those of 2015. Do you feel that what happened in your school was taken seriously?
It’s hard to say. What I think is that we may not have taken on the scale of what was about to start in France, unfortunately. We may not have taken the necessary measures, in particular the surveillance of people who were on S files and we may not have understood at that time their networks, which could reach our country.