With a ceremony focused on the arts, Arras, the crowd, several ministers and relatives paid tribute, Sunday October 13, to Dominique Bernard, the professor killed a year ago, to the day, by a radicalized Islamist former student. The ceremony began at 11 a.m., a symbolic moment when Dominique Bernard, 57, was killed on October 13, 2023 with several stab wounds by Mohammed Mogouchkov, a Russian from Ingushetia, then aged 20.
“A year ago, the Arras attack resounded throughout France, the Arras attack resounded throughout the world. We were suffocated, we were shocked, we were incomprehensible, declared the city’s mayor, Frédéric Leturque. A year later, we had to be there. A year later, we owed it to him to be there. A year later, we are together, still standing. »
In the presence of more than 2,000 people, the ceremony was held on the Place des Héros in Arras (Pas-de-Calais), at the same place where several thousand people had already gathered two days after the assassination of the professor. Thought with those close to the teacher as a “cultural memory sequence”according to the mayor of Arras, the ceremony included different artistic performances, from an interpretation of Mozart’s K.285 quartet to that of a song by Damien Saez, Paradise Children.
“I don’t want any more speeches. Everything has been said”
“I attest that there is no human being except the one who tirelessly fights hatred within and around him”read a friend of Dominique Bernard, taking up a text by the Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laâbi. On stage, an artist created a large canvas live representing a dove flying beyond a blue-white-red shape and the words “Liberty, equality, fraternity”.
Also included in the program were poetry readings and contemporary dance, which aimed to highlight “highlight the values of the Republic, freedom and living together”emphasized Frédéric Leturque. The mayor was the only one to speak, despite the presence of several members of the government, including the ministers of justice, Didier Migaud, of the interior, Bruno Retailleau, and of national education, Anne Genetet.
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“I don’t want any more speeches. What’s the point? Everything has been said”explained Isabelle Bernard to Monde. ” It’s out of the question “ that there is a political recovery, she also affirms to The Voice of the Northin another interview also published on Saturday. The head of state still welcomed https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/1845415288021438507 the « courage »the « combat » and the“love of the teaching profession” by Dominique Bernard. “So many French people recognized him as one of those teachers who change our lives”added Emmanuel Macron, believing that “the Republic lives, at every dawn, at every lesson, at every course, thanks to them [les professeurs] ».
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A minute of silence in high schools and colleges on Monday
“What more beautiful response than musicians, actors, dancers”she continues with The Voice of the Northadding that the other victims of October 13, 2023 “also participated, through their ideas, in building this tribute”. Another teacher and two school officers were injured. Objective : “Defend the humanist values defended by Dominique (…) to help young people move forward, to prevent such unjust crimes from being committed again. » It is with this in mind that she created, in the name of her husband, a literary prize for short stories written by adolescents. Its first edition, open to 4 year old studentse3e et 2of of Arras and its surroundings, has the theme of tolerance.
Dominique Bernard had taught for twenty-five years in the establishment where he died. “A lover of literature, he loved transmitting this love to his students”remembers her sister Emmanuelle Delatte in an interview with the Christian weekly The Pilgrimpublished Wednesday. “He considered that reading and writing contribute to making us free beings”she continues.
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A minute of silence will be observed on Monday in middle and high schools across France in tribute to Dominique Bernard and Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher also murdered by a radicalized Islamist on October 16, 2020, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines). When they learned of the assassination of Samuel Paty, Isabelle Bernard remembers that her husband and herself had taken “awareness of [leur] vulnerability ». “Who will be next? Because there will be one”she told him.
