Myriam Monsonégo the sun-child of Ozar Hatorah
The scenario of his execution is untenable. It says everything about the savagery of his killer. Monday, March 19, 2012, shortly before 8 am, Mohammed Merah who has already killed three soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban before, stops in front of the Jewish college-high school Ozar Hatorah in the residential district of the Roseraie. In front of the gate, he draws and blesses a teenager Bryan Bijaoui, descends a teacher Jonathan Sandler and his son Arié, six years old whom he will return to complete. In the yard, he pursues and kills Gabriel, Arie’s little brother, three and a half years old. Without running, he heads for a little blonde girl in white tights. It’s Myriam Monsonégo, eight and a half years old, the director’s daughter. while fleeing, she wanted to retrieve her pink satchel from the yard, it’s heavy, she stumbles. The killer will have no mercy.
Ozar Hatorah’s mascot
An angel’s face, that of a beautiful child, as blonde with blue eyes as her brothers are dark. Everyone knows Myriam in Ozar Hatorah. She is the youngest of the founders of the school, the Monsonégo couple. In 1991, Yaacov Monsonégo, Franco-Israeli, grandson of the Grand Rabbi of Morocco, and his wife Yaffa, helped by other pioneers, set up the establishment with their own hands, making themselves the parents of the community Jew to entrust their children to them. In the early 90s, Ozar Hatorah had a handful of students. In 2012 before the tragedy, there were nearly 200. So Myriam, if she is in CE2 at the Gan Rashi school a few kilometers away, spends part of her life in Ozar Hatorah. The students, like her family, nicknamed her Myriami, “my Myriam” in Hebrew.. Mischievous, she skips around the yard and throws herself into the arms of the teenage girls. This is how Yaacov Monsonégo wanted his school, like a big family where the little ones rub shoulders with the big ones, where the families know each other intimately. He himself hosts several students with his wife, some of whom act as babysitters for Myriam, and for the Sandler children of Jonathan and Eva, both teachers.
Myriam is the surprise baby of the Monsonegos who already have four grown children living in Israel. It’s a ray of sunshine, a permanent smile, she has a close relationship with her dad, Yaacov, 53 years old at the time, the patriarch of this great family. Gifted, she took piano lessons. And Myriam likes to dance. In June 2012, three months after the killing, her dance class, without her, the end-of-year show in Michelet Park, Bonnefoy district. In this square, there has been an alley since 2019 that bears the name Monsonégo-Sandler.
A very discreet family, “on the fringes of life”
These elements of Myriam’s portraits must be found in the tributes that will be paid to the little girl by her friends several years later, or by the declarations of certain representatives such as Rabbi Abraham Weill in 2012. Jonathan Chétrit, a former student of ‘Ozar Hatorah has just published an enlightening book with the unpublished testimonies of dozens of students or parents who knew the Monsonégo and Sandler families well.
But as far as the Monsonégo family is concerned, the walls that stand are as impressive as the gate, barbed wire and cameras that now surround Ohr Torah. Unreachable. Unlike Samuel Sandler, Jonathan’s father and grandfather of Arié and Gabriel who continue to testify, also unlike Eva Sandler, Jonathan’s widow and mother of the boys who set up her association and agrees from time to time to answer to questions from journalists. Yaacov Monsonégo has given only two interviews to French media in ten years, to France Inter in 2015, to AFP in 2017. His wife Yaffa agreed to speak on Israeli television I24 in 2017, the images were resold at BFMT-TV.
Both keep working for Ohr Torah, In Toulouse. In the dark. In 2017 and then in 2019, they did not attend the trials of the terrorist’s brother, Abdelkader Merah. They don’t come either, or very rarely, to official ceremonies in France. This Sunday, March 20, they will not be at the Halle aux Grains alongside heads of state and other bereaved families. Emmanuel Macron will go himself to greet the couple at school, during a time when the press is not authorized.
In the interview he gave to Laetitia Saavedra of France Inter in 2015Rav Monsonego entrusted to live”on the edge of life“.
Everything is bland. (…) It’s horrible every day. There are no words for that. Time doesn’t help matters. Over time, the pain is not the same. It evolves, it changes. It catches up with us all the time, as soon as we have the impression of finding a certain normality. At school, for example, I deal with problems. But once that’s done, life is unbearable. The weekend, for example, is a happy time for people. For us, my wife and me, it is unbearable. We find ourselves. It is suffering. We are looking forward to the end of the weekend.
Myriam rests in the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem, not far from the Sandlers’ tomb.