Hollande warns against resurgence of anti-Semitism during Pantheon ceremony

Hollande warns against resurgence of anti-Semitism during Pantheon ceremony
By Euronews
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France holds a sombre ceremony honouring four World War ll Resistance heroes during their internment in the Pantheon - the resting place for the nation's great.

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France has honoured four people who resisted the Nazis during World War ll by inducting them into the Pantheon – the nation’s burial place for French heroes.

In his address President Francois Hollande cautioned against the resurgence of anti-Semitism and defended the spirit of liberty displayed in demonstrations that followed recent terror attacks in Paris.

“Seventy years on, these hatreds re-emerge, bearing different faces and under different circumstances, but always with the same words, and the same intentions. They target innocents, journalists, Jews and policemen. The French stood together on January 11 to counter this deadly resurgence because they’re never afraid of defending their freedom,” said President Hollande.

Pdt fhollande</a> is holding the ceremony to induct 4 members of the French Resistance into the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Pantheon?src=hash">#Pantheon</a>: elysee.fr <a href="http://t.co/F52yO0q634">pic.twitter.com/F52yO0q634</a></p>&mdash; French Embassy U.S. (franceintheus) May 27, 2015

Along side Pierre Brossolette, and Jean Zay who died in violent circumstances before the end of the war, Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion were given places in the mausoleum . They both survived capture and deportation, living into old age..

The only other woman to have been honoured in the Pantheon – over whose door is written “The nation thanks great men”, is Nobel prize-winning scientist Marie Curie, whose ashes were moved there in 1995. Another woman is buried there, Sophie Berthelot, but only to be close to her husband, the chemist and politician Marcellin Berthelot.

President Hollande included two women in Wednesday’s ceremony in aprt as a symbolic gesture to acknowledge that women as well as men have made French history.

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