why no minister present will make a speech

TRIBUTE – A ceremony focused on the arts. One year to the day after the assassination of Dominique Bernard by a radicalized Islamist ex-student, Arras paid tribute to the professor this Sunday, October 13, in the presence of several ministers and his relatives.

The ceremony begins at 11 a.m., the time at which Dominique Bernard, 57, was killed with several stab wounds by Mohammed Mogouchkov, a Russian from Ingushetia, then aged 20.

At the time when he had him as a student in college, the French teacher lamented not being able to “say everything[il voulait] » and have to ” be careful “reports his wife, Isabelle Bernard, in a rare interview with Monde published Saturday. “The management team did everything to point out the dangerous character of this boy”she assures.

From Mozart to Damien Saez

The ceremony will be held on the Place des Héros d’Arras, in Pas-de-Calais, at the same place where several thousand people gathered two days after the assassination of the professor, stabbed at the entrance to the Gambetta-Carnot school complex where he taught.

Thought with those close to the teacher as a “cultural memory sequence”according to the mayor of Arras Frédéric Leturque, the ceremony must include different artistic performances, from an interpretation of Mozart’s K.285 quartet to that of a song by Damien Saez, Paradise childrenaccording to the forecast.

Also included in the program are poetry readings and contemporary dance, which aim to highlight “highlight the values ​​of the Republic, freedom and living together”underlines Frédéric Leturque.

The mayor will be, according to the forecast, 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 .

“I don’t want any more speeches. What’s the point? Everything has been said”explains Isabelle Bernard to Monde. ” It’s out of the question “ that there is a political recovery, she affirms to The Voice of the Northin another interview also published on Saturday.

“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”.

A literary prize created in the name of Dominique Bernard

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 4th, 3rd and 2nd year students from Arras and its surrounding areas, has the theme of tolerance.

“A terrorist act pushes people to turn in on themselves, and that’s quite the opposite what I want with this prize: to open the school even more”declares Isabelle Bernard at Monde.

Dominique Bernard had taught for 25 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.

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) .

When they learned of the assassination of Samuel Paty, Isabelle Bernard remembers that her husband and herself had taken “awareness of (their) vulnerability”. “Who will be next? Because there will be one”she told him.

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