Richard Prasquier | |
|---|---|
 Richard Prasquier in March 2016 | |
| Born | Ryszard Praszkier 7 July 1945 |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | President of the CRIF (2007-2013) |
| Predecessor | Roger Cukierman |
| Successor | Roger Cukierman |
Richard Prasquier (born 7 July 1945) is a French cardiologist and Jewish leader. He served as president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) from 2007 to 2013. [1]
Prasquier was born as Ryszard Praszkier in Gdańsk, Poland, on 7 July 1945 to Holocaust survivors who wanted to emigrate to the United States after the 1946 Kielce pogrom against Jews in Poland, but decided to settle in France. After his schooling at the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris and studies in medicine which he completed with a Ph.D, Richard Prasquier became a cardiologist and later the director of the Hôpital Beaujon in Clichy. In 1989, he was a founding member of the Association des médecins d’origine polonaise de France, a grouping of French doctors of Polish origin. [2]
In 1994, Prasquier began his activities with the Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF), the umbrella body of Jewish communities and organizations in France. He became head of the CRIF liaison group with the Catholic Bishop's Conference of France as well as the CRIF International Relations Committee. He also served on the board of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah headed by Simone Veil, and in 1997 he became chairman of the French Committee for Yad Vashem.
In 2001, he was decorated with the French Legion of Honor. [3]
In 2006, Prasquier was among those who welcomed Pope Benedict XVI at the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. [4]
On 13 May 2007, Prasquier was elected as president of the CRIF, beating two other candidates by a clear margin. He succeeded Roger Cukierman. Upon his election Prasquier said that for him, the CRIF was “the communal home of Judaism”, the place “where it is possible to express hopes, concerns and projects”, a place “to fight for Judaism”. [5] He was re-elected in 2010 for a second mandate of three years, beating his rival Meyer Habib. [6] In May 2013, being barred to stand for a third consecutive term, Prasquier was succeeded as CRIF president by his predecessor Roger Cukierman.
Prasquier is married and has five children. [7]
In September 2008, Prasquier led a CRIF delegation which met with Pope Benedict XVI in Paris during the Catholic pontiff's visit to France. "It was very important to us that that given his busy schedule he took the time out to meet with us on this special day, the Sabbath," Prasquier was quoted as saying after the meeting. He also praised the pope for condemning anti-Semitism. [8] However, a few months later, Prasquier criticized the Vatican for lifting the excommunication of Richard Williamson, who in an interview with Swedish television had question the extent of the Holocaust. “The denial of the Shoah is not an opinion, but a crime,” Prasquier was quoted as saying. [9]
Prasquier is also engaged in talks with Muslim leaders, but in an interview with the French daily Le Figaro in October 2012 warned against complacency vis-à-vis a radical version of Islam that was on the rise. [10] France had not fully taken stock of the threat it faces from radical Islamism, Prasquier told the newspaper, adding: “Radical Islam compares its enemies to animals. [...] In the same way, the Nazis compared Jews to bacteria, to rats, to animals.” [11] According to The New York Times Prasquier told French radio France Info : "We must take the measure of this type of ideology. I say that radical Islamism is Nazi ideology.” [12]
At repeated occasions, Prasquier has taken a strong stand in defense of Israel. In January 2009, during Israel's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, he led a solidarity rally with Israel outside the Israeli embassy building in Paris. He said in his speech: “My position is not against the Palestinians, although I want to express my strong solidarity with Israel. It is against Hamas that I stand up, which is an obstacle to peace and with which no negotiation is possible.” [13]
Richard Prasquier also repeatedly spoke out against the French far-right party Front National once led by Jean-Marie Le Pen and currently by his daughter Marine Le Pen. Prasquier said the latter's call for a total ban of religious headwear in public, including the Jewish skullcap, showed that there were “secular fanatics just as there are religious fanatics.” [14]
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
| Other | |
Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF) is an umbrella organization of other groups representing the interests of French Jews.
The term red–green–brown alliance, originating in France, is a conspiracy theory concerning the supposed alliance of leftists (red), Islamists (green) and the far-right (brown). The term has also been used to describe alleged alliances of industrial union-focused leftists (red), ecologically minded agrarians (green) and the far-right (brown).
Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, generally known by his stage name Dieudonné, is a French comedian, actor and political activist. He has been convicted for hate speech, advocating terrorism, and slander in Belgium, France and Switzerland.
Alexandre Adler is a French historian, journalist and expert of contemporary geopolitics, the former USSR, and the Middle East. He is a Chevalier de l'Ordre de la Légion d'Honneur (2002). A Maoist in his youth and then a member of the Communist Party (PCF), he shifted to the right at the end of the 1970s and has since become close to US neoconservatives, as did his wife Blandine Kriegel. Adler is the counsellor of Roger Cukiermann, chairman of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France.
David Habib is French politician of the Socialist Party (PS) who has been serving as a member of the National Assembly of France since the 2002 elections, representing the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department.
Dr. Tsilla Hershco is an Israeli historian and political scientist. She specializes in France-Israel relations, EU-Israel relations, U.S.-France relations, France and the Mideast conflict, Jews and Muslims in France as well as the History of the Jews in France, the Holocaust in France and the Jewish resistance in France. She earned her Ph.D. at Bar-Ilan University and works as senior research associate at the Begin–Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) at Bar-Ilan University. She ia also a "Spiegel Fellow" at the Center of Holocaust research at Bar Ilan University.She is a member of the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust (JRJ). Jewish Rescuers Citation
Hassen Chalghoumi is the imam of the municipal Drancy mosque in Seine-Saint-Denis, near Paris.
Samuel Jacob Rubinstein was a 20th-century French orthodox Chief Rabbi independent from the Consistoire central. He was born in Poland.
Germaine Ribière was a French Catholic, member of the Résistance, who saved numerous Jews during World War II, and was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations.
Isaac Schneersohn was a French rabbi, industrialist, and the founder of the first Holocaust Archives and Memorial. He emigrated from Ukraine to France after the First World War.
Antisemitism in France has become heightened since the late 20th century and into the 21st century. In the early 21st century, most Jews in France, like most Muslims in France, are of North African origin. France has the largest population of Jews in the diaspora after the United States—an estimated 500,000–600,000 persons. Paris has the highest population, followed by Marseilles, which has 70,000 Jews, most of North African origin. Expressions of anti-semitism were seen to rise during the Six-Day War of 1967 and the French anti-Zionist campaign of the 1970s and 1980s. Following the electoral successes achieved by the extreme right-wing National Front and an increasing denial of the Holocaust among some persons in the 1990s, surveys showed an increase in stereotypical antisemitic beliefs among the general French population.
Édouard Cukierman is a French-Israeli businessman.
Roger Cukierman is a French banker, businessman and Jewish philanthropist. He serves as the President of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France (CRIF) and Vice President of the World Jewish Congress.
The Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege was an attack and hostage crisis that occurred in Porte de Vincennes in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shooting two days earlier, and concurrently with the Dammartin-en-Goële hostage crisis in which the two Charlie Hebdo gunmen were cornered.
The Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation is an independent French organization founded by Isaac Schneersohn in 1943 in the town of Grenoble, France during the Second World War to preserve the evidence of Nazi war crimes for future generations. After the Liberation, the center was moved to Paris in 1944 where it remains today.
Francis Kalifat is a French businessman and philanthropist. He is the president-elect of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France, the umbrella organization for Jewish organisations in France.
Georges Loinger was a French soldier during World War II. During his time in the French Resistance, he helped hundreds of Jewish children escape from occupied France to Switzerland.
Théo Klein was a French lawyer who presided over the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France from 1983 to 1989. Klein was a Zionist and a French patriot. He advocated for secular values. He was highly critical of Israeli foreign policy and the nation's unconditional supporters.
Liliane Klein-Lieber was a French resistance member.
Adolphe Steg was a Czechoslovak-born French urologist and Holocaust survivor.
