Leaders of France’s Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths have denounced anti-vaxxers’ likening of the country’s new “health passport” to the yellow star Jews had to wear under the Nazis and urged the protesters to be “one’s brother’s keeper” rather than a danger to others.
They spoke out after protests by over 100,000 anti-vaxxers across France on 17 July, some of whom wore yellow stars as if they suffered like the six million killed during the Shoah (Holocaust).
President Emmanuel Macron announced on 12 July that proof of vaccination or virus recovery would be needed to enter enclosed places such as cafés, bars, restaurants, trains, planes, cinemas, museums and shopping centres. All health care workers would also have to get jabbed.
“The Shoah represents an absolute horror (that must) not become a toy for the benefit of any cause,” the Catholic bishops' conference said. Limiting freedoms during a pandemic was responsible and legitimate.
“Let us never confuse the freedom to travel with the freedom to exist, nor the freedom to go to the cinema or the café and the freedom to praise God or not,” it stated. “This epidemic makes us all feel how much we are responsible for another.”
The bishops’ statement was its second after Macron’s speech. Its first only urged French Catholics to fight the virus and "take their own responsibility for the vaccine”.
The leaders of the smaller Protestant, Muslim and Jewish faiths issued a joint statement in the daily Le Figaro entitled “Being vaccinated is being one’s brother’s keeper”.
François Clavairoly of the French Protestant Federation, Mohammed Moussaoui of the French Muslim Council and Chief Rabbi Haïm Korsia urged the French not to be divided on the public health issue.
“It is inadmissible to plead for freedom to justify a posture that hinders the freedom of others,” they wrote. “To evoke one’s personal freedom to refuse the act of solidarity and brotherhood of vaccination is an absolute deviation from this wonderful attribute that is our free will.”
"All studies now demonstrate the effectiveness of vaccination” they said.
“The response is simple: Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt get vaccinated.”
Like the bishops, they strongly denounced comparisons between the yellow star and the health passport, calling them “shameful amalgamations that only seek to shock“.
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