This past February, French President Nicolas Sarkozy aroused international controversy by revising the national school curriculum, requiring every fifth-grade student to “adopt” one of the 11,000 French children killed in the Holocaust by learning their story. The plan drew wide-ranging criticism for its pedagogical insensitivity and political opportunism. The terms in which Sarkozy framed his proposal––expressly affirming Judeo-Christian values––were especially inflammatory, given the traditional secularism of French governance and the intensity of ongoing debate around...