France / Paris

Mémorial de la Shoah

The »Mémorial de la Shoah« memorial and museum in Paris is one of the most visited sites of commemoration in France. It houses several monuments such as the Wall of Names and the 1956 Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr as well as the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (CDJC). The CDJC was founded in the underground in 1943 by members of the Jewish community with the aim of carefully documenting the persecution of Jews in France.

History

In June 1940, German forces occupied the north of France, including the capital Paris; in 1942, they took large parts of southern France. The south-eastern region of the country (Grenoble, Nice) was occupied by Italian troops in 1942. In March 1942, the SS began deporting Jews from the French territories under German control to extermination camps in occupied Poland. At the time, Italy did not actively participate in the National Socialists' fatal policy of persecution. As a result, numerous French Jews fled to the Italian zone of occupation. On April 28, 1943, about 40 resistance fighters and representatives of various streams within the Jewish community met in Grenoble in the Italian zone. They gathered in the private apartment of former rabbi and industrialist Isaac Schneersohn, where they decided to document the National Socialists' policy of annihilation and collect evidence for the prosecution of these crimes after the war – all this would have to be done in the underground. They founded the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (CDJC, Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation) for this purpose. After the liberation of Paris in the summer of 1944, the CDJC moved its headquarters to the French capital.

Paris, August 1941, Arrested foreign Jews in a transit camp, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B10920

Paris, 2005, Wall of Names with 76,000 names of deported French Jews, Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine

Victims

The »Mémorial de la Shoah« commemorates the persecuted and murdered Jews of France. Approximately 76,000 people – about one fifth of the Jewish population of France – were deported and murdered between March 1942 and the summer of 1944.

With the defeat of the French army in June 1940 the country came under German control. Northern France was governed by the German military administration, whilst the south was initially unoccupied. A government under German influence was established in the spa town of Vichy in the south of France. At the beginning of the Second World War, there were around 300,000 Jews living in France. The exact number is not known as there were no records of religious affiliation in France. The first anti-Jewish laws were passed in northern France at the end of 1940. The Jews were forced to register with the authorities, excluded from society and stripped of their possessions. These policies were followed by systematic arrests by the French police. Jews without a French passport were the main targets of the German SS and police as well as the French authorities. In an attempt to deter growing French resistance, the German military commander General Otto von Stülpnagel (1878–1948) started to have those not involved in the resistance shot and to have Jews in particular arrested. Those arrested were among the first to be deported to the death camps in occupied Poland from March 1942 onwards. A total of 75,000 people were deported to their deaths in the course of over seventy deportation operations. Most of the French Jews survived, mainly in hiding in the south of the country. Around 600,000 people died in France as a result of war and persecution, including 270,000 civilians. There continues to be little distinction drawn between the different groups of victims. However, since the late 1980s there has been increased research into the murder of patients of care homes and clinics. It is now estimated that around 50,000 people fell victim to these operations. Both northern and southern France experienced persecution, collaboration and resistance during the occupation. After the war, remembrance of both the campaign of the »Résistance« as an expression of French patriotism and the suffering associated with the »Déportation« provided a way of bridging the differences between the Gaullist conservatives and the Communists affiliated with Moscow. Consequently, many museums and memorial sites are dedicated to the resistance or remember the deportations, for example the »Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation« (Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation) in Paris, inaugurated in 1956, and the »Centre Européen du Résistant Déporté« (European Centre for Deported Resistance Fighters), which opened in 2005 at the memorial site at the former Natzweiler concentration camp. Since the early 1990s a number of sites of memory have been established, such as the Maison d’Izieu (Izieu Home) memorial near Lyon, which remembers the deportation of 44 Jewish children, the national memorial site at the former camp at Gurs as well as a memorial centre in Oradour sur Glane – a village destroyed by the SS in 1944. The central memorial site dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust is the »Mémorial de la Shoah« in the centre of Paris, which was opened in 2005. French presidents have since then acknowledged shared French responsibility for the Holocaust in France. The memorial site in Caen,commemorating the Normandy landings of 1944, was opened in 1988 and extended in 2002, is the most-visited memorial site outside Paris. The annual national commemorations marking the victory over Nazi Germany take place here. In addition, there are numerous regional museums in France, where the exhibitions focus on the themes of persecution, resistance and deportation.

Remembrance

Léon Poliakow became director of research at the CDJC after the institute moved to Paris; until today, his work is considered ground breaking in the research of anti-Semitism.
Since 1950, Isaac Schneersohn had been an outspoken supporter of the idea of erecting a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. The »Mémorial du Martyr Juif Inconnu« (English: Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr) was dedicated in Paris in 1956. It consists of a cubic parvis bearing an inscription in French and in Hebrew and a crypt with a symbolic tomb for six million murdered Jews. At the same time, the CDJC moved into the building next to the memorial. Located in the forecourt of the building, which was designed by architects Alexandre Persitz and Georges Goldberg (cooperation: Louis Arretche), is the »Wall of Names« which holds information about 76,000 deported French Jews.
The memorial site was opened in 2005 with support of the French state. It displays a permanent exhibition on the history of Jews in France and in Europe during the Holocaust; it also covers the period preceding the genocide and the post-war years. An auditorium and multimedia learning centre are part of the complex.
The CDJC, which has since the liberation in 1944 safekept many original documents of the occupying forces, now has a collection comprising over one million archival documents and 90,000 photographs – a large part of the collection was donated to the CDJC. It is administered by the »Fondation pour la mémoire de la Shoah«, which was founded in 2000. The foundation's endowment is drawn from the funds of French Jews that were expropriated under German occupation. The memorial is furthermore supported by the city of Paris and French ministries. There is a partnership agreement with the French railway SNCF.

Paris, June 1942, Jewish women wearing the Star of David, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-N0619-506

Paris, 2009, Monument in the courtyard bearing the names of concentration camps, Pierre Mondain-Monval

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition and special exhibitions on the persecution and resistance in France, children's programme, educational offer for school groups, teachers and other disseminators, organisation of excursions to Auschwitz, guided tours on the Jewish history of Paris, archive, library, bookshop

Open

Open daily, except on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Closed on Jewish and national holidays.

Contact

http://www.memorialdelashoah.org

contact@memorialdelashoah.org

+33 (0)1 427 744 72

17, rue Geoffroy l'Asnier
75004 Paris

Paris, 2009, Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr, Pierre Mondain-Monval

Paris, 2009, Star of David on the façade of the building complex, Pierre Mondain-Monval

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