Sarkozy defends Holocaust proposal amid uproar

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing a tide of criticism over his call for schoolchildren to "adopt" Jewish child victims of the Holocaust, hit back on Friday saying France had to raise children "with open eyes".

However, in a move that could sink the project, France's most prominent Holocaust survivor, Simone Veil, came out firmly against the plan, calling it "unimaginable, untenable, appalling and, above all, unjust".

Sarkozy touched off the controversy on Wednesday when he told France's Jewish community that every 10-year-old schoolchild should be "entrusted with the memory of a French child victim of the Holocaust".

The proposal unleashed a storm of protest from teachers, psychologists and his political foes who said it would unfairly burden children with the guilt of previous generations and some could be traumatized by identifying with a Holocaust victim.

More than 11,100 French Jewish children were deported from France to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps in eastern Europe during the German World War Two occupation.

"The emotional burden can have negative consequences for a child who is developing," Gilles Moindrot, general secretary of the Snuipp-FSU trade union which represents most primary school teachers, said in a statement.

The EMDH children's rights group said: "No educational project should be constructed on death."

KNOWLEDGE

But Sarkozy, speaking in Perigueux in central France, brushed off the uproar.

"It is ignorance that produces abominable situations. It is not knowledge," he said in a speech. "Let us make our children, children with open eyes who are not complacent."

"Believe me, you will not traumatize children by giving them the gift of the memory of a country ... Any psychologist will tell you: you have to tell a child the truth," he said.

But Veil, who supported Sarkozy's presidential bid and who sat next to him at the Wednesday dinner, appeared to disagree.

"One can't inflict this on 10 year olds. You cannot ask a child to identify with a dead child," Veil, who was deported to Auschwitz when she was 16, told L'Express news magazine.

With Sarkozy's popularity ratings already at a low point, the controversy could further hurt his political standing only a month before key local elections when France will deliver its first judgment on his nine months in office.

The clamor gave fresh ammunition to his political foes, who charge him with erratic behavior and say his hyperactivity masks a lack of real policies.

"Really this president is extraordinary! One day he is preaching God to us ... Now he has suddenly become a teacher. He is deciding what's a good and what's a bad way to go about educating young children," fumed left-wing Senator Jean-Luc Melenchon.

But Sarkozy won support from opposition Socialist leader Francois Hollande and the president's conservative UMP party rallied in support.

Education Minister Xaviet Darcos assured people the project would be handled in a practical, low-profile way. "We won't be putting a policeman in each classroom," he told reporters.

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau in Perigueux and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Michael Winfrey)