President Nicolas Sarkozy wants every French child to be responsible for the memory of a Jewish child killed during the Holocaust. I am jewish and I don’t think this is the right way to do that.
I think the Holocaust was a unique and exceptional event that only a strong educational experience will humans understand a tiny part of its horror. No history course can achieve that goal, in my opinion.
I think the right solution was 1) build a real modern Holocaust museum in France, like YadVashem in Israel 2) Make all high school students go visit the museum once 3) Like in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, put a badge on each visitor’s jacket with the name of a Jew exterminated during the Holocaust. The visitor loses its name and takes the one of the dead during the two-three hours visit.
But I think the most disturbing thing is the feeling that Sarkozy seeks to bring religion into politics. One day we will here a replica of George Bush saying something like “God bless France”. That day, it will be time to go to politics and fill the gap.
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My eldest daughter lost her first milk tooth. She’s almost 6 years old. Obviously, the mouse took the tooth…
Where does this story of the little mouse come from? And, what about the tradition of replacing the tooth with money?
Actually, the mouse is part of many countries folklore. The exchange tooth-Money ritual is probably Anglo-Saxon (The Fairy Tale of The Teeth of Lee Rogow, 1949). But the mouse origin is in France, in the 17th century under Louis XIV. Madame d’Aulnoy wrote the fairy-tale of the Good Little Mouse. This story is different from the story that we tell our children today. In that story the fairy turns into a mouse to help the gentle queen to defend herself against the evil king.
To punish the king, the little mouse hides under his pillow. At night, she devours the ears, nose and everything inside his mouth ! The story of the mouse as it is known now goes back to the early 20th century. In 1927, Esther Watkins Arnold published The Tooth Fairy, a character sketch in three acts for children. Then, in 1949, Lee Rogow published The Tooth Fairy, the first real story for children on the small mouse. This story was very popular in the 50’s. Since then, parents have adopted this little mouse that has become part of family life.
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Nice quote of Swami Vivekananda :
Even a person who does not believe in god may go to heaven, but a person who does not believe in himself, there is no place for him even in hell.
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I wanted to write a post for peace.
But, I finally found it was too pretentious. Worse, useless.
So I found another way to describe it.
Clic on the image.
Image found on globalgalley.com
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