News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) French President Nicolas Sarkozy has dropped his proposal to teach the Holocaust to children following a wave of protests from left wing politicians. He told the annual conference of the French Jewish umbrella group last month that every pupil should be assigned a name of a Jewish deportee during the Nazi rule and then research the family. Critics objected to the plan, arguing that it would cause schoolchildren to suffer trauma.
  
The government will explore other avenues to "encourage children in classrooms to look at, not other children in particular, but rather a given situation in a given city," according to former government minister and Auschwitz survivor Simone Veil. He agreed with opponents of the proposal, saying it was "unimaginable, unbearable and unjust."