Memorials in Paris

This weekend I got to visit two memorials within Paris related to the holocaust and it's effect on the French people. Dr. Lasser has mentioned several times that the French do not harp on what occurred during World War Two as much as the Germans. They prefer to look toward the future instead of fully recognize what happened in their past. This fact was quickly proven to me when I looked up the locations of these memorials. Both happened to be two of the areas in Paris I have visited the most, yet I never came upon these memorials in the past.

The Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation is located behind Notre Dame. It is a memorial that is commemorating the over 200,000 French that were deported to Nazi concentration camps during the course of the war. The memorial was very sobering and was very precise in the information about the people being deported. The part I found the post interesting was a map of France with numbers in each county depicting how many people were deported from there. There was also a hallway with over 200,000 small pebbles lining the walls to symbolize all of the citizens that were deported, which really put into perspective all the lives that were affected by the movement.

The second memorial was the Memorial de la Shoah, which is actually part of a larger museum that was unfortunately closed when we tried to visit. Although we could not go inside, part of the memorial was visible from the outside. Part of the memorial that I found most interesting was a wall of names that depicted over 3,000 non-Jewish French people awarded with the title "Righteous Among Nations", for their assistance in helping Jews during the war. 

I am truly surprised at the memorials dedicated to the Jewish population within Paris's borders. I plan to visit the Vel d'hiv memorial and tour the Jewish museum very soon.