France has announced an award to memorialise Ilan Halimi, the first Jewish person to be killed in a hate crime in the country since the Second World War.
Culture Minister Françoise Nyssen said the government would award the prize every year to candidates aged under 25 who come up with original projects to fight antisemitism and racism.
Halimi, a 23-year-old mobile phone salesman was abducted, tortured and killed in 2006 by a gang that believed Jews “were rich”.
An awards ceremony will be held each year on February 13, the anniversary of his murder.
Ms Nyssen told the JC that the prize focused on younger generations because “it is better to alert children as early as possible, because that’s when we can still have a positive impact on them.
“That’s our responsibility. We must do it.”
The idea of an award in Halimi’s name came from a local prize that once existed in the district south of Paris where he was found in agonising pain shortly before he died.
Former Socialist MP Jérôme Guedj said: “Our goal was to tell younger generations the story of Ilan Halimi and fight antisemitism, but once we lost our majority on the local council, the new head of the district changed the name of the award to ‘the award of interreligious friendship’.”
Mr Guedj said they had received two dozen ideas for the award under its earlier local guise, including one that would have taught the story of the Holocaust through art, history and theatre.
The Ilan Halimi Prize announced this week will be awarded nationally to help the fight against racism and intolerance.
But, for Émilie Frèche, the head of the new award’s jury, there is a long road ahead to full awareness.
Ms Frèche wrote a book about the Halimi abduction that inspired a movie called 24 Days, which described what Ilan and his family endured during his 24 days in captivity.
“I was immediately struck when I heard what happened to Ilan Halimi and when I saw the picture of the gang that killed him. They looked like a Benetton picture but were united by hatred,” she said.
“I knew that this killing revealed what would become the ‘new antisemitism’, just like the Captain Alfred Dreyfus case revealed what would become of France a few decades later when the Second World War Vichy regime collaborated with Nazi Germany.”
“Today, children I meet in schools don’t know who Ilan Halimi is and that’s why this award is important.
“But we’re only at the beginning of the process. For example, one school awarded the local Halimi prize but three years later antisemitic graffiti was found in the same establishment.
“Much more needs to be done.”
