One year to the day after the assassination of Dominique Bernard by a radicalized Islamist ex-student, Arras paid tribute on Sunday to the teacher, during a ceremony combining texts, music and dance. Among the crowd were his relatives, survivors of the attack and several ministers.
The city siren sounded at 11:00 a.m., the time when Dominique Bernard, 57, was stabbed several times by a Russian from Ingushetia, then aged 20 and on file for Islamist radicalization.
More than 2,000 people gathered on the Place des Héros in Arras (Pas-de-Calais), at the same place where several thousand afflicted Arrageois met in October 2023, two days after the assassination of teacher, stabbed at the entrance to the Gambetta-Carnot school complex where he taught.
Emotion and creativity
An interpretation of Mozart’s K.285 quartet, contemporary dance, poems read by his loved ones, a cover of “Les enfants paradis” by Damien Saez, tribute to the victims of the Bataclan: the ceremony gave pride of place to the arts, leaving little room for speeches, as his wife Isabelle Bernard had wanted.
“I attest that there is no human being except the one who tirelessly fights hatred within him and around him,” reads a friend of Dominique Bernard, taking up a text by the Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laabi.
On stage, an artist creates a large canvas live representing a dove flying beyond a blue-white-red shape and the words “Liberty, equality, fraternity”.
Discourse and political silence
“A year ago, the city of Arras fell into horror”, and “a year later, we are together, still standing”, declared the centrist mayor of the city Frédéric Leturque from the podium, adding that he “a thought” for Samuel Paty, a teacher who was also the victim of a jihadist attack almost four years ago.
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.
The Minister of Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher, elected in Pas-de-Calais, the former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, the president of the Hauts-de-France region Xavier Bertrand (LR) and the deputy for the North Ugo Bernalicis (LFI) were also in the top ranks.
“I don’t want any more speeches. What’s the point? Everything has been said,” explained Isabelle Bernard in an interview with Le Monde. “It is out of the question” that there will be a political recovery, she said.
National tribute in high schools
“What more beautiful response than musicians, actors, dancers,” she continues in La Voix du Nord, emphasizing 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 in the attack.
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 young radicalized Islamist on October 16, 2020, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines) .
>> Listen to the explanations at 12:30 p.m.:
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