The Maison d’Izieu - Memorial to the Exterminated Jewish Children

Maison d'Izieu - Mémorial des enfants juifs exterminés

Since 1994, the Maison d'Izieu Memorial has commemorated the 44 Jewish children and their educators who were deported from here in 1944 and later murdered. It is one of the central memorial sites to the victims of National Socialist crimes in France.

History

In May 1943, Jewish couple Sabine and Miron Zlatin took a group of Jewish children into their care in a house in Izieu, a village to the east of Lyon. Many of the youths had previously been held at internment camps in the south of France, set up by the Vichy government. Aid organisations such as the Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE, a welfare organisation for Jewish children) had succeeded in rescuing them from these camps. They were brought to Izieu where they were considered to be relatively safe: at the time, the region was not yet under German occupation, unlike the rest of France, but controlled by the Italians, who had occupied the region in November 1942. The children's home was officially established with the permission of the local sub-prefecture. In September 1943, German units took the territories which had previously been occupied by the Italians. Immediately, the SS and police apparatus began persecuting the Jewish population. On April 6, 1944, members of the Wehrmacht and Gestapo raided the Izieu orphanage and arrested the 44 Jewish boys and girls as well as 7 of their supervisors. 42 children and 5 supervisors were later murdered at the Auschwitz extermination camp by the SS. Two youths and the director of the orphanage were deported to Estonia and shot there.

Izieu, 1943, Before the war, the »House of Izieu« was used as a holiday home, Maison d’Izieu

Izieu, 2001, Memorial plaque with the names of the murdered children, Maison d’Izieu

Victims

The children's home in Izieu was in operation for just under a year, and in that time, it offered a safe haven to over 100 children. On April 6, 1944, the day of the Wehrmacht and Gestapo round-up in Izieu, there were 45 children at the orphanage. All of them were from Jewish families with the exception of one boy, whom the Germans later released. 44 children and their 7 supervisors were first deported to Lyon and then to the Drancy transit camp near Paris. By June 1944, the SS had deported 42 of the children and 5 of their supervisors to the Auschwitz extermination camp. All except one supervisor perished in the gas chambers; member of staff Léa Feldblum survived the camp. Orphanage director Miron Zlatin and two youths were deported from Drancy to Estonia on May 15, 1944, where they were deployed as forced labourers. In the course of the summer of 1944, they were shot in Tallinn.

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

Sabine Zlatin, co-founder of the Izieu children's home, was temporarily away on April 6, 1944, the day of the raid. A few weeks later, she returned to the ransacked house and collected the children's letters and drawings. After the war, she continued her efforts to commemorate the history of the Izieu children's home and applied with the prefect of the Ain Département for the affixing of a memorial plaque on the house. On April 7, 1946, two years after the raid, the plaque and a memorial column were dedicated in a neighbouring town. Relatives of the children and locals could now jointly pay tribute to the victims.
1983 was a turning point in the commemoration of the Izieu home. Klaus Barbie, the former head of the Gestapo in Lyon, was put on trial in France. Lawyer and historian Serge Klarsfeld and his wife Beate had tracked him down in Bolivia a few years earlier. The deportation of the children of Izieu played a central role in the trial: while conducting research, Serge Klarsfeld found a telegram written by Barbie on April 6, 1944, reporting the arrest and planned deportation of the children. Izieu thus became a well-known site in French contemporary history. In 1988, following the end of the trial, an association whose aim it was to create a memorial on site was established. In 1992, French president François Mitterand included the project in his »Grands travaux« programme of nationwide presidential projects. In 1994, the Izieu memorial was opened.

Izieu, March 26, 1944, Group photograph of the children 12 days before the round-up, Maison d’Izieu, Collection Marie-Louise Bouvier

Izieu, 2001, Former dining room, today part of the permanent exhibition, Maison d’Izieu

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition, guided tours for individual visitors and groups, educational offer for school groups, students and teachers

Open

Monday to Friday: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
In July and in August daily 10 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.
Closed during the French Christmas holidays and all weekends in December and January

Contact

http://www.memorializieu.eu

info@memorializieu.eu

+33 (0)4 798 721 05

70 route de Lambraz
01300 Izieu

Izieu, 2001, Inscription with the dedication of the memorial, Maison d’Izieu

Izieu, 2001, The white building on the left houses the »Memorial to the Exterminated Jewish Children«, Maison d’Izieu

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