Holocaust Memorial Day…As Rap

Francky Perez

By Anne Cohen April 8, 2013

Francky Perez, a Morrocan-born Jewish singer known in France for his hip-hop version of “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem, has struck again. On Friday, Perez released the English version of his French single, “N’oubliez Jamais” (Never Forget), a rap song about — you guessed it — the Holocaust.

In an interview with The Jewish Journal, Perez explained that he got the idea for the video while visiting Yad Vashem last year. While wandering the museum, he spotted a picture of a child in a concentration camp.

“I looked at the kid and he looked exactly like my second son,” he said. “I had a shock. I needed to do something that expressed what I was feeling, and I’m someone who uses rap music for therapy.”

“I am Sephardic,” he added. “But sometimes when I talk to other Jews, I feel they think that being Sephardic we don’t feel this hell they went through. That’s not true. Being Sephardic, I feel this is in my genes as much as an Ashkenazi. I suffer for my people, I feel it in my genes the same pain and suffering, not like the people who went through it, but like all Jews now.”

Perez hopes the song and video, which took him six months to write and make, will help educate both Jews and non-Jews about the horrors of the Holocaust.

Does it? See for yourself.

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

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