Tributes are pouring in to pay tribute to the memory of Dominique Bernard, the teacher killed on Friday October 13 in a high school in Arras.
[Updated October 14, 2023 at 1:00 p.m.] Politicians, colleagues, students… All paid tribute to Dominique Bernard, the literature teacher killed Friday October 13 in a high school in the Gambetta-Carnot school campus (Pas-de- Calais) by Mohammed Mogouchkov, a 20-year-old young man of Chechen origin, who is a former student of the establishment.
While the high school remains open this Saturday, even if classes are not held, anonymous people, including many students, went to the gates of the establishment to pay tribute to the memory of this 57-year-old teacher, who leaves behind him a woman, also a teacher, and three older daughters. To Le Parisien, a student testified: “He was the teacher I dreamed of having. Everyone found him friendly, interesting, easy with the students.” And another added on France Inter that he was a teacher “appreciated by his students”.
His colleagues and former colleagues also paid tribute to Dominique Bernard, and spoke of a teacher who fundamentally loved his work: he was a “lover of literature who knew how to transmit his passion, (…) who worked a lot and took very close to his work,” explained a philosophy professor to Le Monde. A sports teacher remembered him as a “very friendly person, with whom we laughed a lot in the teachers’ room”.
A few days before the sad anniversary of the death of Samuel Paty, killed on October 16, 2020 in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, one of Dominique Bernard’s relatives told Facteur and Le Figaro that the 57-year-old professor was “a fervent defender of secularism, like Samuel Paty”. A principle recalled by Emmanuel Macron, during a speech in front of the high school, Friday: “We stand together and we stand together (…). The choice is made not to give in to terror, to leave nothing divide us and to remember how school and transmission are precisely at the heart of this fight against obscurantism.” Gabriel Attal also spoke, and announced a “moment of union and contemplation” in schools next Monday.
