The Holocaust Memorial in Paris, formally the Mémorial de la Shoah, at 17 rue Geoffroy l’Asnier, is in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near the Marais district. It is just over a half mile ( one kilometer) from Hôtel de Ville Metro station, and slightly closer to the St. Paul Metro station.
I visited the memorial about 10 years ago. It holds a sensitive mix of photographs, artifacts, and symbolic constructions in remembrance of murdered French Jews. A graphic example is a small room, two or three walls of which are covered by the handles of orderly rows and columns of small but deep file drawers. A poster explains that each drawer is filled with cards arranged in order. They aren’t for a library’s book titles or authors’ names but rather by a category that organizes hand-written details about the represented victim.
Across the street is an older building, on the corner of Rue Grenier-sur-l’Eau. A metal plaque mounted on its wall explains in English that during World War II the building had been a school. One afternoon, Nazi agents arrived to collect and detain Jewish students as they began their routine walk home.
After a significant wait, the children’s worried parents began to arrive, all of them wondering where their children were. Parents and children were arrested, ultimately deported, and later suffered their unposted fate.
The Wednesday, Jan. 21 morning news on public radio reported that ICE agents in Minneapolis had detained a five-year old-child and kept him outside his house as bait to successfully draw a parent or two out of their house. At this writing, I have not learned what has since occurred. Nor have I learned who and how the curriculum for training ICE agents is generated.
Or is it simply a Nazi copy?
Norman Spencer
Florence