Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion will end his state visit tomorrow with a second private meeting with President Charles de Gaulle arranged at the latter’s request. The meeting tomorrow has had no time limits placed on it.
It was understood that President de Gaulle’s request for the second talk indicated a keen interest in an opportunity to hear at greater length the Israel leader’s views on the Middle East and the international situation.
Speaking at a luncheon in his honor today, Mr. Ben-Gurion pledged that the Jewish people, “which has a good memory, would never forget the moral, political and military help provided by France to Israel in its difficult times.” The luncheon was tendered by the “Amitie France-Israel.”
M. Michelet, the Minister of Justice who was one of the 14 Cabinet members attending the luncheon, extended greetings to the Prime Minister and the people of Israel. He declared that the Prime Minister, “incarnates as head of the State of Israel the phenomenon that not money, or armies or power makes a nation great but its spiritual values.”
Three hundred and fifty representatives of Jewish organizations in France will gather tonight to greet the Israel Premier. Earlier in the day he paid tribute to Paris as “the second capital” of every civilized human being for its cultural values. He made that comment during a visit to Pierre Duvairgne, the Mayor of Paris, at the city hall where the Prime Minister received a plaque marking the 2,000th anniversary of the French capital.
One of the most moving aspects of the Prime Minister’s tour of Paris was his visit to the Memorial to the Jewish Martyrs. Thousands of residents of the surrounding Jewish quarter waved and cheered as the Prime Minister solemnly entered the memorial and descended into its crypt to stand before an enormous Star of David cut out of black marble. He wrote his name in the Book of Honor and commented to aides that “this memorial will live forever but an even more adequate memorial to the Jewish holocaust exists in Jerusalem and in the State of Israel itself.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
