A move to include the 150th anniversary of the birth of the notorious French anti-Semitic and far-right author Charles Maurras in official ceremonies across France this year caused such an outcry that it was struck off the agenda, calling into question the criteria employed by the country’s learned national commemorations committee. Amid the farce over Maurras, historian and Mediapart contributor Nicolas Lebourg argues here that a truly worthy commemoration sorely missing from the official calendar is that of the plight, and unsung contribution to France, of the hundreds of thousands of Spanish Civil War refugees who, in the runup to World War II, crossed into the country seeking refuge from the Franco regime.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose hard-line politics have come in for fierce criticism in France, attended the 75th anniversary of an infamous WW2 roundup in Paris for deportation of about 13,000 Jews, after which the two men held talks on the crises in the Middle East.
A visit to Paris on Sunday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he will join in a commemoration of the 1942 arrest in the French capital for deportation of an estimated 13,000 Jews, has been criticised in France by Jewish organisations and others as handing his government an unwelcome political platform.
Manuel Valls and other officials were booed at a packed ceremony on the Promenade des Anglais amid criticism of security policy in wake of Bastille Day outrage.
