A
lot of
people talk about
Guy Môquet's letter to his family, that President Sarkozy had asked
teachers to read to pupils with no
obligation to do so. Few people have full knowledge of it. Here it is,
very simple:  Beloved
Mommy,
My little brother I treasure,
My Daddy I love,
I'm going to die. All I ask you, particularly to my Mommy, is: Just be
brave and strong! I'm so, and I want to stand so just as those who went
through it before me have been.
I'd rather live, indeed. But I wish with all my heart that my death
will serve a good purpose. I didn't have time to kiss Jean. I kissed
both my brothers Roger and Rino. But the real one I couldn't,
unfortunately! I hope that my belongings will be sent to you. They may
be useful to Serge, who I insist will be proud to have them on some day.
You my daddy, if I have hurt you as well as Mommy, at all, I greet you
both for the last time. Just be aware that I've done my best to follow
the way you've shown me.
I say my farewells to my friends, to my brother I love a lot. Let him
be a good student so he may be a man later.
I'm 17 and a healf years old, my lifetime's short, but all I regret is
that I have to leave you all. I'm going to die along with Tintin,
Michels.
Mommy, I bid you, I want you to promise me that you will be strong and
brave and overcome your grief.
I can't add anything. I leave you all, Mommy, Serge, Daddy, I kiss you
all with all my kid's heart. Be strong!
Your Guy who loves you.
Guy
A
deeply moving letter by a kid, whom a firing
squad is waiting for. In those tragic days no more
distinction was drawn between communists and conservatives, workers
and bourgeois, when any dignified human, conscious that he or she
couldn't grovel to one of the worst systems ever contrived by
politicians: Nazism, was having no preoccupation but to resist, fight
or die!
On October 22d, some teachers (about 5%) have
refused to read Guy Môquet's letter to their pupils. A few of them
considered the sentiments in the letter as
indecent. Some others thought that reading the letter amounted to
serving Mr Sarkozy's political interests. Which is a certainty, but is
there anybody on earth who fail to defend his ideals? I personally
never miss an opportunity to highlight my own ideals. That did not in
any way take away from the grandeur and bravery of a very young man,
who commands admiration, a by no means unsound admiration. I don't
think, either, that Mr Sarkozy intended making the teachers train their
pupils as real tough nuts baring their chests to bullets out of warlike
stupidity. I think that he only intended showing young people,
unconscious that they live a happy, peaceful life sheltered from fierce
coercions, that terrifying hardships might reemerge tomorrow and they
would have to face them with the dignity, bravery and even love
peculiar to man compared to animals. For the last minutes of his short
life the kid, raised in an unbelieving family, finds the honorable,
moving emotion of Jesus on the cross, who does not curse his
executioners and who does weigh up his sacrifice's value.
For thirty years our mission likewise has reminded the French people
that grandeur, bravery...in short heroism (Rev of Arès
XXXY/4-12)
happen to be constructive values not to be put aside as if they were
"pompous" or "behind the time" (two words I've freshly heard), because
men will not happily escape from hardships in store, if they do not
regain Guy Môquet's letter's sweet plain majesty, which also belongs
among the many element of penitence.
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