Family, relatives and countless anonymous people paid tribute this Sunday in Arras to Dominique Bernard, this French teacher murdered just a year ago in front of his high school by a former student who became a radical Islamist.
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Mozart, contemporary dance and poetry against barbarism. Sunday morning, on the Place-des-Héros in Arras (Pas-de-Calais) the relatives of Dominique Bernard, murdered by one of his former students just a year ago, returned to him a new tribute through the arts, which this 57-year-old teacher loved so much.
Only the city’s mayor was invited to speak. Ministers from the new Barnier government, also present at this commemoration, were asked to attend this tribute, in silence.
A choice assumed by the professor’s widow, also a teacher. “What’s the point? Everything has been said”she explained to the newspaper The World.
Isabelle Bernard especially did not want no “political recovery”.
The other victims of the attack of October 13, 2023 also participated in the organization of this memorial and cultural sequence. A second teacher as well as two agents from the school campus, where they worked, were injured during this terrorist attack.
On Sunday, a crowd of anonymous people attended this moment of sharing whose objective was to “defend the humanist values defended by Dominique(…) to help young people move forward, to prevent such unjust crimes from being committed again.”
It is also as an extension of this tribute that the professor’s wife also launched a literary prizein the name of her husband, rewarding short stories written by adolescents. Its first edition, open to middle and high school students, has the theme… tolerance.
This Monday, the tribute to Dominique Bernard will continue in all schools in France with a minute of silence and a moment of exchange between teachers and their students while a second commemoration is also planned for Wednesday, this time in memory of Samuel Patythis professor beheaded near his college by another young Islamist, on October 16, 2020.
Dominique Bernard was killed with several stab wounds by Mohammed Mogouchkov, a young 20-year-old Russian from Ingushetia. The teacher knew this student well he had noticed and reported in the past “the dangerous character”.
Shortly after the tragedy, the young man was quickly arrested, as well as his brother and a cousin. The attacker had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group before taking action.
The investigation is still under investigation. The trial for this terrorist attack has not yet been scheduled.
