Arras terror assault: The dying of Dominique Bernard, a revered literature trainer who ‘took his work to coronary heart’

“Monsieur Bernard,” as the scholars known as him, was “a really affected person trainer, actually respectful.” “And he may very well be humorous too,” mentioned Anna. This highschool scholar had barricaded herself in her classroom on Friday, October 13 when her “trainer shouted that we needed to shut all of the doorways,” because the terrorist entered their Gambetta-Carnot highschool within the northern city of Arras.

In entrance of the varsity, mother and father recalled who Dominique Bernard was, the 57-year-old French trainer who was killed by the assailant. The daddy of three daughters, who got here from a household of academics and was married to an English trainer, “took day out for parent-teacher conferences and was an incredible listener.” “He died as a result of he tried to guard our youngsters,” lamented the mom of a highschool scholar.

Bernard studied literature in Lille, Northern Franc, and had been instructing there for the reason that Nineteen Eighties. Bruno Lecat, who shared the college benches with him, remembers him as “a wealthy human being, very beneficiant and attentive to others. He was a really lovely individual.” Throughout his research, he fashioned a theater firm with Nathalie Raoul, who described him to Agence France-Presse as a “respectful, a bit of secretive, very delicate” man. “His character was important to the functioning of the group, with quite a lot of discretion and originality”. On the time, he was a “very clever scholar, under no circumstances into fads or tendencies, a really distinctive individual.”

Bernard was “a lover of literature who knew the way to cross on his ardour,” and “a hard-working trainer who took his work very a lot to coronary heart,” mentioned philosophy trainer Damien Dousseau. “He was a really cultured individual with many pursuits. Exterior his work right here, he frequently gave lectures on literature, in addition to cinema and music,” added a distraught colleague and good friend. Fabien Dufay, a sports activities trainer at Gambetta highschool, recalled a “very pleasant colleague, with whom we used to have plenty of enjoyable within the employees room.”

‘He revered us’

In 2002, Bernard was one of many founders of the Université Populaire d’Arras (now closed), an open college created within the spirit of the colleges based by French thinker Michel Onfray. Paule Orsoni, a retired philosophy trainer who labored alongside him on this venture, known as him a “sensible man with a really eager eye, an incredible connoisseur of Julien Gracq and René Char.” Bernard was additionally an avid traveler, taking the chance to take pleasure in one other of his passions: cultural heritage and monuments.

The scholars emphasised his private qualities: “He was very reasonable, he revered us. He did not play favorites and we have been all the identical to him,” mentioned 16-year-old Sacha Ahlers. Alysée Lecœur’s sister, a scholar, had him as her foremost trainer in 2020. She remembers that “Mr. Bernard succeeded in making (her sister) love French, whereas earlier than, she hardly ever opened a e-book. He knew how to liven up his classes and speak about writers in a means that college students.” “He was truthful and heat,” she added, and “did not want to lift his voice to be revered.” Bernard and his household lived in Berneville, a small village of 500 inhabitants round ten kilometers from Arras.

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