MARCHE 5 MAI | Gesher Ha'haïm

WALK OF LIFE - SUNDAY May 5

1:00 p.m.

Nations Square

The march will resume where she stopped last year. It continues its route in the city and its history from the Place des Nations.

Several speakers will the inventory of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

During the event, we will have guests of honours:

Member of the Knesset and
Representative of the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations
Representative of the Permanent Mission of Germany to the UN

Christian Bussy

President of the Geneva Evangelical Network

Jobst Bittner

Pastor and theologian, founder of the walk of life movement

Thomas Sandell

Founding President of the European Coalition for Israel

Sophie Ellen Frank

Swiss singer, Director of the Academy of Opera.

artistic interpretation

2:15 p.m.

School of the Cropettes

3:30 p.m.

During the Second World War the school of the Cropettes housed a refugee camp.

The treatment of people who "fleed on racial grounds" was not not to consider as political refugees.

The acceptance or refusal of refugees was often arbitrary and about fifty people were turned back and captured by German forces and murdered in the Auschwitz camp.
If Switzerland was neutral, were the individuals who claimed to be neutral? Obviously not, and under the alibi of neutrality some have legally sent people to their death by turning them back.

This was the case of little Rosette Wolczak, a 15-year-old girl, turned back at the border for "incitement to debauchery" after an evening of Rosh Hashana. After three days of wandering at the Geneva border, she was arrested by the Germans and then died in Auschwitz, a victim of Nazi barbarism.

Several speakers will address this subject on school grounds.

Richard Pittet

President of the Organizing Committee

Christian Meier

Pastor of the Protestant Church of Zürich

Father Alain-René Arbez

Priest of St Nicolas de Flue and member of the Swiss Commission for Jewish-Catholic Dialogue

Marc Früh

Special educator and writer, author of the book "forbidden to ignore"

Sophie Ellen Frank

Swiss singer, Director of the Academy of Opera.

artistic interpretation

The Great Synagogue

The construction of the great synagogue marks the end of the prohibition of citizenship of the Jewish community after 350 years of exclusion from the city of Calvin.

If the Jewish community was able to live in Versoix and Carouge, it was not until 1875 that people of the Jewish faith could access citizenship, until then reserved for Christians.

Patricia Bidaux

Member of the Christian Democratic Party in the Grand Council.

Eric Ackerman

Socio-cultural animator, spiritual guide. Rabbinical delegate, officiating at the Great Beth-Yaacov Synagogue in Geneva

Sophie Ellen Frank

Swiss singer, Director of the Academy of Opera.

artistic interpretation

4:15 p.m.

The communal hall of Plainpalais

In the 1930s, anti-Semitism in Geneva was not anecdotal.

Within Geneva politics Mr. Georges Oltramame, Member of the Grand Council of the national union (1933 - 1936) is extremely virulent towards the Jewish community. Little before 1932, four socialists are elected to the Council of State, which is simply unbearable to G. Oltramare who decides to organize, in the communal hall of Plainpalais, the public trial of Léon Nicole and Jacques Dicker, a member of the Jewish community.

By a sequence circumstances, this initiative ends with the shooting of Plainpalais on November 9, 1932 where 13 people are killed and 65 are injured.

If the object of the meeting at the communal hall of Plainpalais was not anti-Semitism, in view of the hatred that Georges Oltramare bore to the Jews it is more than likely that anti-Semitic remarks have been uttered.

The objective of this stage is to proclaim benevolent words and intentions towards the Jewish community there. or some wished them misfortune.