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Burial of Bergson in Pantheon Urged by Catholic, Protestant and Jewish Leaders

January 17, 1945
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A proposal that the remains of Henri Bergson, famous Jewish philosopher, who died in January, 1941, be transferred to the Pantheon, shrine of France’s illustrious great, is made in a letter signed by Maurice Schuman, Catholic resistance leader, appearing in the Catholic newspaper L’Aube. The letter also suggests that Romain Rolland, noted novelist who died last month, and Charles Peguy, author and writer, who defended Capt. Dreyfus, be buried with him.

In the letter, which has elicited favorable response from Cardinal Suhard, Grand Rabbi Julian Weil and Pastor Boegner, head of the French Protestant Church, Schumann says that “the honor (of interring him in the Pantheon) will allow to enter with him all oppressed, all persecuted and all exiles, because he closely identified himself with men who suffered most from tyranny because he was of their blood. His admission to the Pantheon will be a striking reparation due and given to Israelites and, in them, to all hostages, to all deportees and to all those whom the monstrous regime tried to segregate from the human community.”

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