8:44
Today, we have an appointment at the Holocaust memorial. Come with us. This is the real mnecamp. This is the real AOL Hitler mamp. So now we're going to enter a place that is off-limits to the public. Secret documents, Marshal Pétain's annotations, the signatures of the highest Nazi officials. and in one of the prisons of the Drancy internment camp, about twenty, about thirty people. A journey that is quite long without water, almost no food, and without hygienic conditions. It happened in our country. Jacques, thank you for having me. We are here on the forecourt of the memorial. The architects conceived this basin which evokes the chimneys of crematorium ovens with the names of killing centers and
concentration camps like Auschwitz on top. It's a mixed camp. This is where the majority of Jews in France were murdered. Berg Belsen is also a camp which is extremely well known because when the Nazis decided at the end of 44 to evacuate the camps which had already survived their deportation, they arrived at Bergen Belsen, they died of tifus a few days before the arrival of the British who liberated the camp. So, Jacques, here we are at the memorable point of the choice. What is this ? What is its role? We have several roles. First, the memorial of choice is an archive center. so that archives can be collected since 1943. Today, we have 50 million archival documents, 400,000 archival photos, 80,000 books constantly being
enriched by new acquisitions, and therefore we have researchers coming from all over the world, historians, to work on our archives. That's the first thing. The second thing is that we were a place of memory, a place of reflection where people come to remember, there are commemorations. And then the third aspect is that we are a place of education. You know, I always say something a little sad, which is that ultimately, apart from looking at their memories, there's not much we can do for people who have been murdered. But on the other hand, what we can do is teach so as not to forget this history, to show that anti-Semitism and racism must not have a place in our societies.
Jacques, this is what we call the crypt, right? Yes, that's exactly it. Our founder, Isaac Schnerson, was a Russian Jew who arrived in France in the 1920s. He was quite old but he immediately became a republican in love with France. After the war, he wanted to create a monument dedicated to the Jews who had been murdered during the Second World War. He will create a symbolic flame here that represents remembrance and he will bury under the flame descendants of chow and various concentration camps to make it a place of remembrance. So this is the tombstone. And there we see a sentence written in Hebrew. What does it mean? A phrase that comes from the Bible. I have seen the pain of my people. Young and old fell into darkness,
mowed down by the glève. Schnerson wanted to make this place both a secular and republican building. Initially, when the building was created, it was called the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr by analogy to the Arc de Triomphe dedicated to the unknown soldiers. But nevertheless, because it was Jews who were murdered, there are indeed always biblical references, but it remains a totally uh republican place. Hence the reason why the French flag accompanies us every day. It's beautiful. Jacques, we've arrived in a new room of the memory of the choice, what is it Now we enter the permanent exhibition of the memorial. This is the presentation of a global history, the fate of Jews in France during the Second World War.
Where does this hatred come from? Exactly. It is said that Jews arrived in France in the 4th century and that they are not foreigners but that they contributed to building this country in which we live. For generations, we have been trying to tell the story that Jews are just like everyone else, that there are Jewish athletes, that there politicians, there are Jewish homosexuals, artists, or whatever. And what does it mean to be Jewish? Well, we explain that being Jewish ultimately means being extremely secular people who have a loyalty, a fidelity towards history and culture. Being Jewish does not necessarily mean being a believer or practicing. To be Jewish is to feel a sense of belonging to a history or a
moral code. That's what we're trying to explain. Being Jewish is a voluntary act and a loyalty that you actually build yourself, your Judaism, your identity. Today, Jews are accused of so many things, so many things, etc., that it is necessary to set the record straight. So now we're going to enter a place that is off-limits to the public. Come with me, it's reserved for professionals only. Nice to meet you Karen, thank you for having me. Here, we are in the basement of the memorable Chois. These are called archive stores, the places where all our collections, photographs, objects, archives, and books are kept. Here we are in the sorting room where when we receive new documents, we settle in,
empty the boxes and begin the first sorting to see what it is. What is the most significant document you have discovered here? It's the letters, hundreds and hundreds of letters. This was written at the Gurs camp in 1942. It is in German and we see here these black marks, it is the mark of censorship by the camp authorities at the entrance and exit. So, there was a whole network that was set up following the clandestine letter camps. Even today, in 2026, new documents are found every day and almost more in 2026 than in 1993 because not only are we more identified and identifiable, but
people come spontaneously and above all we go looking for them. So if there are some who watch the YouTube video and have memories of the Second World War or relics related to the persecution of Jews, they can come to see you at the moral of the choice to drop off the documents and above all not think we already have a lot and that it is not necessary for them to bring us more but each document, each object tells a different story. These are drawings that were made by an artist named David Brenna. He was a Russian Jew, a true artist by profession, and he was arrested because he was Russian in June 1941, interned at the Compienne camp, he was transferred to Drancy.
He was deported from Drancy. He drew exactly what he actually saw. It has the watchtower, the barracks and the church because the camp is close to the town. He also spent some time making sketches in isolation. Mr. George Vers was interned with him at the Compiér camp and then at Drancy. Deportee that we see 76 but he returned from deportation and he is one of the founding members of the CDJC of the memorial of choice. All right. OK. And that's what continues to provide evidence of what really happened. First of all, it proves that these people actually existed. Despite the internment, despite the terrible conditions in which they were placed, the artists
continued to produce as much as they could. So we continue to look at the archives a little bit So here we are in the second sequence of the exhibition. We are trying to show the main phases of the history of Nazism. That is because after the failed coup of 1923, Hitler understood that he would have to adopt certain formalities to come to power. It's not by force. So. On January 30, 1933, Hitler legally came to power following an election. That's something to keep in mind. Initially, it was the Germans who were the first victims of Nazism; trade unionists, anti-Nazis, political parties, everything was banned in Nazi Germany. And so, Germany was Nazified. That is to say, there was nowhere for you to hide.
You had to be a Nazi, you had to join the Nazi party. If you were young, you were in the Hitler Youth and so on. A ban on everything on the democratic level and with a single ideological vision, that was Nazism and here on the other side, the history of France. And so you see in parallel, there you go, one answers the other how the Vichi regime was established in France, why Marshal Pétain arrived and how he compromised France in an alliance with Nazi Germany. The first area where the Nazis and the French could work together was the issue of anti-Semitism and the issue of arrest. The internment of Jews is what was done between 1940 and 1941. They were put in camps and then from 1942 onwards,
it was no longer sufficient since the Nazis decided the first deportations of Jews from France began in March 1942. It was gradual before arriving at what is called in quotation marks the final solution. The things we are talking about are documented and also to show that there was virulent anti-Semitism in our country, a genocide does not happen on its own. It starts first upstream with words, with the exclusion of ideas, stereotypes, prejudices and so on. And at the very end, at the very end of the road, we can end up with genocide. Those are tampons. Yeah. Something that is obviously being talked about a lot is marking. So we're talking about wearing the star and we're talking about papers that
are stamped "Jewish". Wow! A stamp with "Jewish" written on it. So. Who was going to stamp it? The authorities. So. Well, the authorities, the town hall, the town hall employees, uh, the agents of the police prefecture in charity and with written uh identity card, food card. The Jews were forced to register. From October 1940 onwards, they had to go to the town halls in the occupied zone and, much later, they had to wear the yellow star. So then after the stamps, they invented another system since the stamps were a little too easy to mask or erase, and so they invented the hole punch system. That's already much more difficult, I did n't pay attention. OK.
Tibo, if you want, I've set aside two documents that I'd like to show you. We're going to put on gloves. What? Gloves? Archives, you know, are like human beings, they can catch diseases and viruses. W là m camp, là c'est le vrai m camp, d'Aolphe Hitler. Following the PCH in Munich in 1923, Hitler was thrown into prison. He spent almost a year in prison and there he wrote and in fact he understood that if he wanted to be credible, he had to write. So this is the presentation of his ideology. It's actually an election manifesto that he wrote. Exactly. Not everything is in it because there are things he didn't think about at the time or didn't want to write about at the time. There is his desire to enlarge Germany,
the territorial expansion before the Second World War, Austria, the Sudetenland and so on. But overall, there is his racial ideology because for him, the Jews are responsible for everything, including the defeat of Germany during the First World War. That's what antisemitism is. That is to say, you designate an ideal scapegoat and you will indeed tell yourself, it is easier to designate someone rather than to look at yourself in the face. It's their own fault. Yeah, it's their fault. It's easier to accept psychologically. In Hitler's case, with propaganda, you can lead people wherever you want to make them believe things. It needs the full support of the German population. The press will be
banned. Censorship will be in place. So you have no other option than to be a Nazi, and especially with the Aryan race, the superior race. If you are not Aryan, you are an inferior race. So I'm going to put you aside. He was obsessed with blood purity. And so, for example, there are German women who will be ostracized or murdered because they had genetic diseases. He wasn't the perfect man. Exhibition: The Jew and France. What is this? Is this a real exhibition taking place? Social media didn't exist back then, but the Nazis knew that propaganda was fundamental.
Joseph Gobels was the one who would take charge of all the propaganda that would be orchestrated by the Nazi regime. And so this is an exhibition that will tour Nazi-occupied Europe and will be translated into several languages. And this poster, it's truly iconic. She brings together all the stereotypes, the claws, the necromancer who controls the world with that terrible face which is that of a false soyur in a way, huh. France is described as Jewish. All the Nazis, upon arriving in France of course, will say that France must be de-Jewished. So we are going to expel all Jews from the economy, from social life, from political life and so on because France is Jewish, it is controlled by Jews. They understood the fundamental mechanisms of propaganda.
Yeah. Communication and more communication. What I can show you here is the law concerning the status of Jews, which legalizes the persecution of Jews in France, and which first defines what a Jew is. Once we determined who they were, what they had the right to do or not do. The handwritten annotations you see on the document are in Marshal Pétain's own hand. No. So that has been authenticated. He has experts who have intervened, which mainly shows that he has strengthened the draft text that was proposed to him. He was stricter, for example, regarding an exemption for being a descendant of Jews born
French or naturalized before 1860. He said no, no, that doesn't apply, so this is a document that is extremely valuable in responding to all those who say that he protected French Jews. Yeah, it's crazy to think that it was actually within the law. Once again, we're talking about France. This is the country we live in. We're talking about France. They were no longer allowed to have a telephone. They were no longer allowed to have the radio.
The daily lives of Jews during the war. So they must have had yellow star-stamped papers that you see here, which had to be worn sewn on in a very visible way. This one is authentic then. Quite. So. So we saw identity cards but also food cards. So this, the food card, well you have to take it out every day when you have to do your shopping. You must declare that you are not Jewish if you want to open a bank account. Jews could now only board the last car of the subway. OK. No, I didn't know. There you have it, we know the photo of the parking lot where Jews and dogs are forbidden. So, access to the store which is reserved for Jews at a time when, well, the stores are already empty because of
rationing. If we want to know what a racial ideology brought to power looks like, we have to look at Nazism. Because in other genocides, these were shorter phenomena. Racial ideology exists but it is less visible because it lasted for a shorter time. Nazism is legal, racial laws are legal. So, from the moment it's legal, we have thousands of legal texts in our archives. So inside, if you want, you really have a lot of things if you want to understand Nazism. At first, he wasn't very successful, but it was from these electoral conquests in the 1930s that M Camp became very widely known. And then afterwards, you know, when people get married in Germany after 1933, so after Hitler came to power, they give you Mcomf. Whoa As a wedding gift. Yeah. So.
Now, I could present you with two objects because, in fact, we tell the story much better by embodying it, by telling stories of real people. Look how beautiful she is. Oh, a trumpet. And it's very beautiful because we received it in 2022 quite recently and it wasn't in this condition at all, but we had it restored. Who did this trumpet belong to and how do we know? So this trumpet was given to us by the daughter of the gentleman to whom it belonged. He was a professional musician. All right. And this person was deported, is that right?
He was arrested during the Veldive roundup, interned and deported on July 22, 1942. He did not return. So through this object, it allows us to talk about him, tell his story, and then afterwards, we also have mysteries. Here, I'm going to show you this, it's very recent. So you see, that's how we received it. It's a violin that is very damaged. It's absolutely unplayable, obviously. And the story of this violin is quite incredible. We know very, very little. In fact, this violin was proven by a gentleman who was an SNCF employee. He discovered this violin left abandoned in a train carriage that had transported Jews who were being sent to the Pitié-Salpêtrière camp.
Okay, reloland. The people had to leave the violin behind her when they got off the train. This gentleman recovered it, and he kept it for his entire life. His daughter recounts her memories in this small SNCF notebook. In fact, we don't have absolute proof. But in all good faith, everything suggests that it was truly a violin that belonged to a Jew who was arrested and deported. There, we have our book. What is this? Earlier, I told you that German society had been completely Nazified. And so this is a children's book, the poisonous mushroom which represents all the stereotypes that a Jew could have. And the idea is that overall the first image is a lady talking to her son who says to him, "You know,
among mushrooms, there are mushrooms that are edible and others that are poisonous. I'm going to teach you how to recognize the poisonous mushrooms from the others." Ah! And then afterwards, she applies it to the Jews. I'm going to teach you how to recognize a Jew in the street because it's like a poisonous mushroom. It's also dangerous. It's a bit chilling because of the idea that anti-Semitism should be taught to children from a very young age. Exactly. so that they become good Nazis when they grow up, good soldiers. And so, of course, in these caricatures, you learn all the possible and imaginable stereotypes: money, Jews control the world, they control the media, they
plot against everyone. Finally, anti-Semitic stereotypes are almost the same today as they were 100 years ago. Where does the stereotype about Jews and money come from? Well, originally, you have to understand that in the Middle Ages, Jews did not have access to all professions, including in France. They were not allowed to own real estate; he was not allowed to own land. So a number of Jews had no other option than to become merchants. Or they will be what are called money lenders, which is the ancestor of the bank. But that doesn't mean they 're rich. That means they're going to take money from someone who is rich. They act as intermediaries to lend it to someone who has needs. And so, Jews were labeled as
bankers, which would imply that if you are Jewish, you are necessarily rich. But you know, it's serious because that's what led to Yalimi's assassination. They kidnapped him because he was Jewish and they thought, because he's Jewish, we're going to demand a very high ransom. And in fact, his parents were very modest, had no money, and unfortunately, he was murdered. It is important to understand that these prejudices are serious because they can unfortunately contribute to the murder of certain people based on these prejudices. The vault. Oh yes, things are serious here. Oh no, this is no laughing matter. I should have let you do it Yeah, I gave him a hand, he wasn't there. So, the original lists of deportation convoys are kept in the vault.
This document has only recently entered our collections. It was discovered in February 1945 in the ashes of the crematorium at Birkenotu just after the liberation in a bottle Birkenotu 1944. The text is written in French by a Jew who was deported from France and who was assigned to the sub-commando which takes care of the management of the bodies because in fact there are so many dead at Birkeno. The zonder commando is the gas chamber, crematorium, and extermination complex. What does this letter tell us? This is the last letter of a man who knows he is going to die since the under commando revolt took place in November. They know they are all going to
be eliminated. Moreover, he says that of his group, there are only two left. The second one is David, and he will return from deportation, and he will not testify, he will draw. How can anyone believe that it didn't exist when all this happened? It's actually a last will and testament. He writes to his wife and daughter, who knows he will never see them again. He gives them instructions on how to behave after the war, that his wife is still young, that she herself should rebuild her life, gives advice for business and he also gives some information on what happened. For me, this is extremely moving because it's a document that was
written, uh, by the hand of the deportee in the heart of hell. And which managed to reach us in an extraordinary condition and which the family who had kept for years locked in a safe decided to entrust to us. with the sole regret that I will not be able to see you again for a single moment. Yeah, it's wow, it's powerful, huh? And the letter was accompanied by a small note which said a prayer of love to please deliver this envelope to the French consulate or to the Red Cross to forward it to the address and therefore of the mail of the letters thrown from the train at the time when the deportees leave the stations who moreover they have been searched before departure so they have nothing left
on them. So we're going to find words that are written on a business card, a scrap of paper that's lying around in someone's pocket. There is one, he says, he writes to his fiancée, I am writing this letter with my blood because he has no ink. On the train, dear parents, Saturday, August 22, 1942 at 1:30 a.m. Swiss man on his way from Paris to Drancy, possibly to be released. I am on the same train as Marcel and Jacqueline are his little cousins. I embrace you with all my heart. Your beloved daughter, Ad Fox. Finally, AD, his real name was Adolphe but so he called himself Adi.
He was very young, he was 14 years old. Adi was deported, he returned from deportation, he was a ping-pong champion. He died not too long ago. It is 1939, the Nazis invade Poland. There are 3.5 million Jews living in Poland. 10% of the population. What they are going to do is gather the Jewish population into ghettos. The goal is not yet to murder the Jews. The goal is to remove them from society and protect ourselves from Jews who are carriers of disease. But these ghettos, the largest of which is the Warsaw ghetto where there are tens of thousands of Jews confined in an extremely small space. There are epidemics, little food, and there are deaths every day. And what we see in these images is that every
day, bodies are being collected. This is a first step before extermination. Exactly. So here, we can see a photo of a Jew being executed right next to it. That's a real, official photo. Yes. So this is a photo that was taken in Ukraine in 1942. So we are a few months after the start of these mass executions, the Nazis created mobile commandos which advanced behind the German army and as they advanced in Ukraine, they murdered the Jewish population they found in their path in a very barbaric way. We are seeing what are called mass shootings. The first method of killing the Jewish population was shootings. They gathered people presumed to be Jewish
and shot them. But it should be noted that 1.5 million Jews were murdered in this way. They gather people together and ask them to undress. So we can clearly see in the photos that people are naked and they are being murdered. And here we see that women and children are the first victims because for the Nazis, women and children represent the future. Who took these photos? So, you should know that many, many photos were taken in a very official manner. The Nazis had a photographic propaganda service. It was both propaganda and at the same time a way to report; you have photos taken and you send them to the Nazi authorities in Berlin. That's the first thing. And then you also have to know, it feels strange.
Ah yes, OK. We take off the gloves. Pardon. The Nazi soldiers themselves found it exotic to take pictures of dead Jews and they sent them to their families where they kept them as souvenirs. You really have all kinds of photos, official photos, more unofficial photos, clandestine photos, on the contrary, to bear witness by saying one day someone will see these photos and they will see what the Nazis did There were also a few videos, we see some short videos at the exit of the camps. These films will be used as evidence during the Rber trials which started in October 45. There, we have a lot and it is normal to talk about the victims at the beginning of the existence of the CDJC. We mainly gathered the
archives of the executioners. Just to set up the process of deporting Jews to France, there were dozens and dozens of exchanges of letters, negotiations, and discussions to decide which convoy to send first, on what date, the signatures of the highest Nazi officials, secret documents - we have the documents, but we also have the handwritten notes. We're not in France anymore, we're really talking about the extermination of the Jews and the implementation of the final solution, the establishment of ghettos, the gatherings. Ah yeah, you can see the Nazi insignia on the document there. And Alfred Rosenberg, so these are all these archives, was the ideologue of the Nazi party, all these very official documents
and so on, but we also have his personal archives. We have his diary, or more precisely his address book with the phone numbers. So we have Himmler, Hitler, Gering, and so on. W and I see the same thing, there are lots of tapes, if I may. These are microfilms. Before digitization, to reproduce the documents and for them to have been forced into the microfilm archives. Obviously, you need a special device to read them, but that's simply a negative. And in fact, we have images. OK. Those are negatives. It's a snapshot of a moment, photos taken one after the other.
Absolutely. And there, well, you can't actually modify the document because nowadays with a digitized document you can do whatever you want. We digitize a lot today, but it's for ease of communication of the document in the reading room. When you have the original, you digitize it, there's no problem. If necessary, we'll bring out the original. Moreover, in that binder there was the telegram from them which led to Klaus Barbie being charged with crimes against humanity. And at the time of the trial, there was a whole debate, particularly from the defense lawyers, saying, "We haven't seen the original document, it might be a fake, and so on." There was a whole investigation because the document
had been improperly filed. They had difficulty finding him but they found him, they provided him and he was uh presented uh at the trial. Klaus Barbie, one of those responsible for the persecution of Jews in France, was an officer in Lyon. He is notably responsible for the arrest and torture of Jean Moulin, but also for the arrest of Jewish children who had found refuge in the Isieux colony. Isieux is in one of them, a very cute little house in the mountains. The Zlattin couple had taken them there because they had left the camps for a number of them to protect them, to save them. He had gathered them in this colony and it was Klaus Barbie who was in the Lyon region at the time who arrested 44 children
and this is the document shortage of paper during the war. Paper shortage, so we're using military maps which are no longer useful because they've changed the borders anyway. This document reports on the raid on the children's home where 41 children aged 3 to 13 were arrested and were transported on the next convoy to Drancy on April 7, 1944. It is signed Barbie, and it is this document, the original, that was loaned to the court. Obviously, they returned the documents to us afterward, and all these documents point to guilt, but it is this one that allowed them to accuse him of crimes against humanity, which are imprescriptible. This was in 1987. And how do you address an audience that may never come to the memorial
? It's true that it's interesting for him to know all that. So there you have it: lawsuits, stamps, paperwork. It's a small piece here and there, it's a very small piece here. So, here we see lots of photos of children. What is this place? So, in fact, in the exhibition, we wanted to end with this space that we dedicated to the Jewish children who were deported from France. Of the 76,000 Jews deported from France, 11,000 were children. Among these 11,000 children, we have managed to collect approximately 5,000 photos of them today Are these real photos of children who were deported, or is that it? These are photos that we obtained in every possible and imaginable way because we do a
collection work all over France, abroad and so on. Knowing if you want to know that photography is not something widespread on an individual level. Today, we take pictures of everything. It's not something that's widespread. What is interesting for us in this space is also to show the nature of the crime. They wanted to kill people, not for what they did, but because they were born with something. A child is innocent, yet they were among the Nazis' priority targets because they were the future of a people. There, really, we realize that we put a face to all the names we've seen previously and we project ourselves, I think, even more. Yes, that's it.
It's also about moving beyond statistics. It is also the idea of asking ourselves what these children might have experienced in an internment camp, in the convoy between Drancy and Auschwitz, getting off the train at Auschwitz. They were happy human beings with the joy of life that one can have when one is a child. We are completely carefree. That's what a child's life is like. And then all of a sudden, we will tear them away from life and ultimately prevent them from having any kind of life at all. Here you have the entire collection of photographic archives, this time focusing on medical experiments.
He tested it. It's these burns, they are burns. These are burns, injections of products. It's what? These are real photos, possibly taken by the Nazis. That's it. These are real photos taken by the Nazis. Yes. Yes, absolutely. real photos of Nazis too, or rather war criminals to be more precise. We can no longer say these are photos of Nazis. Yes, but that's because unfortunately, Nazis aren't the only war criminals. Many were Nazis, but not all. They actually look like ordinary people But it is ordinary people who are the whistleblowers, the
collaborators, it is your neighbor, the shopkeeper next door who finds an opportunity to benefit from your larger apartment or the photos of the trials are also very interesting. Procurber, therefore. Nurbert and all the translators who are here, I imagine this is the door of a shack that could be found in a concentration camp. That's it. That's the facade of shack number 6. Absolutely. It's a real one, not a reconstruction by B la Rollande. That's because we're still in France here. It must be understood that the Jews were generally arrested by the French police or the French gendarmes and that they were temporarily confined in camps in France such as Drancy for example.
That's how it was in Drancy before they were deported to Upper Silesia in Poland to the killing center where they were going to be murdered. This is the Beau la Rollande internment camp next to the city of Orléan in the Loiré where there were two camps Pitivier and Baolande. So a burial camp is not necessarily an extermination camp. No not at all. Yeah. The internment camp is on French territory and this photo is very interesting. You can find it in the film "Naked Fog" except that there was still censorship at the time in 1956 and they cut out the French gendarme so as not to show that it was French gendarmes who were guarding the place, France was ashamed.
We needed to work towards reconciliation. When we were doing the memorial expansion work in the 2000s, a gentleman called me and said, "Hello, I'm a farmer. My father salvaged a shack after the war because we were looking for firewood and so on. And once he got the shack, he didn't dare burn it down when he realized that people, especially children, had been interned inside. So he kept the shack on his farm. He passed away, and his son called us and said, 'Listen, this is a relic. I want to give it to you so you can display it.' So we installed it here as if it had always been here, finding its place in this location that wasn't intended for it. It's important to have original physical objects that show the reality of what the war was like.
Gabriel, where are we here? Here, we're opposite the Cité de la The silent, silent Drancy internment camp. We can see it just behind us, and we're facing the monument, which dates from 1976 and is there to mark the space and remind us of the historical importance and weight of this place, which otherwise remains invisible to passersby. It was here that Jewish deportees were imprisoned before being sent to various camps in Germany and Poland. Exactly. This is where most of the Jews of France were taken after their arrest, and then, after a stay in the Drancy camp, were deported to extermination centers in Poland, not primarily to the Bircono camp.
How long did the prisoners spend on average here in this prison? Some would spend months and months without knowing what awaited them, and others would spend a week. Simon Veille spent a week in the Drancy camp. So, as you can imagine, he doesn't have many memories of Drancy because it was really a transit camp. A passage for some, for most people. Today, what remains can be found? The U-shaped building is here. However, the excavation hut, which was made of wood, the communal washhouses, and the communal latrines are completely gone. The barbed wire, of course. When did they decide to remove everything? They didn't say, "We'll keep
this as a relic so we don't forget because France was ashamed." It's not exactly a question of shame, actually. It's more that after the end of the Second World War, there was a housing crisis. In particular, there were bombings in the department, so people needed housing. This building was originally intended for social housing. So, as soon as the war ended, it was decided to transform, to ultimately transform this building back into what it was meant to be. So, it's a social housing complex today, and in fact, this allowed the building to be preserved because it is So the housing unit wasn't destroyed.
We're going to see a prison in a little while. Where is it located here? Well, there were several prisons in the camp, located in the basements. These are what we call the prison cellars. And the one we're going to visit is in Block 3. You have to imagine it. You have to picture it. There were two rows of barbed wire, and a patrol for the gendarmes who were monitoring the camp. So there was extreme surveillance. Of course. Attention, archive area. So here we are in the archives storage area of the Choix Memorial. This is the heart of the institution. This is where the collection of documents began, documents that would serve as evidence so that the victims could assert
their rights after the war. So even today, we collect catalogs so that researchers, historians, and families can find the information they need. Letters, a naturalization application, correspondence. Here, we see that the person made the declaration, so he went to register at the police headquarters. Here, a certificate stating that there was a First Communion. Some were baptized during the war to avoid. Okay. OK. A short elementary notebook. There you go, Maurice. And this is probably the last thing that remains of this little boy. His parents were arrested during the Veldive roundup. The children were hidden, and
after the war, they got the apartment back. They had to go to court to get their parents' apartment back. There's a whole section on that too. So all of this is a piece of life, each time. So, Gabriel, behind us, we have a railway carriage. Can you tell me the story of the carriage? It's a carriage that dates from the 1940s, which was found after the war in the Juvisi train station, and it's certainly a carriage that was used for the deportation of Jews from France. This is typical of deportation wagons, a cattle car in this case, more for horses, you can see that from the height of the windows. From the outside, you can imagine how crowded it was, since in a wagon like this, there are between 50 and 80 people, more like 80.
So you can really imagine that the people were crammed together So, Gabriel, do you think we have the right to go inside the wagon or not? Yes, we can open the wagon, we have permission because it's usually closed. That's right. It's usually closed. We only open it in exceptional circumstances. And today is an exceptional case. I guess so. Okay, great. For the deportees who left from Dranite to go to A, how long was the journey They would take a 10-minute bus ride and then board A wagon like this, and then it's a journey of about two days and three nights. So, you have to cross the border into Germany and then into Poland.
There you go. So, obviously, they don't know how long the journey will last, and it's quite a long journey given the conditions they're in: no water, practically no food, no hygiene. So, here we are, inside the wagon. First observation: it's hot. Yet, it's March. The deportees leave in the summer, just like yesterday. You can imagine it's extremely hot inside. There are 70 or 80 people, and extremely cold in reality, even in winter. As we often say, they were dehumanized. Exactly. They are dehumanized because their transport isn't considered important, except for getting them to their destination to be murdered.
Dran, we're above Paris. Tac Franc tac, we're skirting Poland and we're going as far as all the way to Auschwitz in Poland. And there were also 4,000 people from France who left Drancy to go to the extermination center of this Bibor, only a few survived. We know that we talk about this one much less We talk about it much less, and yet 4,000 Jewish people from France perished. So, there you have it, it's truly invisible. And then I think there's one last thing about this wagon: it's a SNCF (French National Railways) wagon, and they made deportation wagons available to the Nazi occupiers. So when we talk about the collaboration of the Bifer regime, we're talking about this in particular.
It's not to distort it, but did they have a choice? Well, yes, because it's a tool belonging to the French State, which is the Vichi regime, and which could choose to make available gendarmes, police officers, and tools such as the National Railway Company. Iron. So yes, the answer is yes. Without any ambiguity. Wow, when we talk about collaboration here, we're right in the thick of it Yes, absolutely. And it was French gendarmes who also escorted this kind of convoy to the border Yeah, it's crazy to have to remember that. Well, yes, I think it's important for the. Yeah, of course. And today, the SNCF, on the contrary, participates in many memory projects around the Holocaust, but at the time, well, it was
clearly a tool of deportation that was very useful for the Germans and the Vichy regime. Although many railway workers resisted, Jacques behind me, there are lots of names on the wall. What is it? What does it mean? Well, on the outer wall of the memorial, there is the list of the Righteous Among the Nations of France. That is to say, we wanted to focus on the French population who took risks to save Jews during the Second World War. 76,000 Jews were deported from France. That represents 25% of the pre-war Jewish population. But 75% of the Jews in France were saved thanks to the French people.
We undoubtedly had one of the most anti-Semitic governments in Europe at the time. But conversely, the French people mobilized. How can one be unjust? It's a real process. Three or four testimonies from people who were saved. Okay. To pay tribute, and so it's very serious. It's a commission chaired by a Supreme Court justice, to tell you how extremely serious it is. You see, it's not thousands of people who receive the title of Righteous Among the Nations. Do they still add names today? Yes, they still add names today. But what you have to understand is that the Righteous Among the Nations are
not actually seeking No medal. And so there are many people who saved Jews during the Second World War who weren't interested in receiving a medal, who did it because they felt it was their human duty, and sometimes they didn't even tell their families what they did during the war. There are people who saved dozens of people. That's what you have to understand. And we see that it's all over France, not just in Paris. We have Paris, we have Paris. Yeah. After the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, where 13,000 Jews were arrested in Paris on July 16th and 17th, 1942, in broad daylight, where entire families with children, grandparents, were arrested by the French police to
be handed over to the Nazis and then deported. It's estimated that it was at that moment that the French population, who saw the roundups in broad daylight, couldn't have imagined it because it was Vichy propaganda claimed that people were going to work in the East. We don't see children working in the East, infants, or people over 80 years old, for example. And they truly began the rescue of the Jewish population. Let me give you an example. In the Netherlands, 75% of Jews were deported and 25% were saved. In Poland, over 95% of Jews were murdered. So the French people really played a role, yes, an important role. 75% of Jews saved. We mustn't forget that.
The French behaved heroically despite pressure from the regime. Exactly. Jacques, this is the Wall of Names. What does it mean? We engraved in stone the names of all the Jews who were deported from France. We decided to bring to light the names of these people whom the Nazis murdered in the shadows of. Schwitz. The Nazis were convinced that even in death, Jews were a threat to the Aryan race. The Nazis gassed Jews, but they burned the bodies. So the problem for Jews after the war was how to mourn when there were no bodies. And so the memorial was created in 1956 to address this, almost recreating a tombstone by
engraving a name in the stone, allowing people to come and pay their respects. You see, we put the first names, last names, and dates of birth. So naturally, you do the math. At the top, there are the dates of deportation. You think to yourself, "Hey, that's a kid who was 4 years old, but what are we talking about?" And above all, you realize the immensity of the number of people, seeing all those names: 76,000 Jews deported from France. You see the immensity, and it continues inside as well. It continues inside. The first one we see leaves on March 27, 1942. The Nazis were so obsessed with the murder of Jews that, even in defeat, they continued to deport and murder Jews. The last convoy to leave France departs
on August 17, 1944. Paris is liberated on August 25. That gives you an idea of the extent of the obsessive hatred. When you 're there, you better understand what genocide is. List of deportation convoys. So we have lists for almost all the convoys that left France. Everything was noted, archived, everything was extremely well organized. The identification stops at the departure point. We know, because we have testimonies, that some died during transport. There were three days of transport depending on the convoy, sometimes in very cold conditions in winter or very hot conditions in summer. Upon
arrival, they didn't take the list, even though there was a list that accompanied the convoy. In fact, There had to be a selection process on the spot upon the train's arrival. Men, women, children, the elderly. Men, women, the elderly, women with children, and so on, depending on the needs. There might be young people, women, or men capable of working, but if at that moment there wasn't a need for additional workers because several convoys had arrived and the camp was full, then people who could have worked were sent directly to their deaths. So the only ones for whom we have information upon arrival are those who, as we say, entered the camp to work.
They were selected to work. For all the others, we don't know when they died on the train, whether it was just upon arrival or a few days later. Okay. And these lists-this is the list for the August 1942 convoy that left Odranci; it was the 20th. And so it's thanks to these documents that we were able to build the wall. Otherwise, we would n't have been able to. But it's also because of these documents, hastily prepared just days before the convoy's departure, which contained many transcription errors, crossed-out names, and so on. And so what we see, particularly from August 1942, is the deportation of
children. All these children, whose faces you've seen-look, 32, 33, 31, 39-that's their year of birth. They are 3, 10, 12 years old-entire train cars filled with children. The Nazis decided to deport several convoys from Pont-à-Mousson (formerly Pont-à-Mousson), but initially, they only deported the parents. 4,000 children remained in the Loiret camps. When the AV (Auxiliary of the Interior) learned that children were still there, he feared their escape and that it would be discovered that the French gendarmerie was guarding
abandoned children. So he had them transferred to Drancy in train. And when they arrive by train at Drancy, well, there are children so young they only know their first names. There are infants, there are babies. They're going to be deported like that. They'll spend a few days at Drancy and then they'll be deported without names. And the work of the memorial is also to find the names of all the people who were deported. So that's part of the work we do in the archives. It's a sad episode for which Vichy is entirely responsible. Entire families were murdered, and so our role is also to preserve their names and tell their stories because there's no one left to do it.
Are there any names that are somewhat well-known here? There's Simon Jacob. Simon Veille-she became Veille when she got married. And can we find the name of Ginette Colinka, with whom. I made a YouTube video about seven years ago? It's Ginette Tarkski. We won't say her age, Ginette, she doesn't like it when people mention it. No, no, no, no. Next to me, there are some engraved stones. What are they? They're plaster tiles that were discovered in 2009 during renovations. We found graffiti on these partition walls. So, traces left by the internees, often the day before their deportation. So, a final trace, a proof of their existence.
This one is particularly well-known. It's from a little boy who was deported at the age of 14. He wrote his first and last name, Martin Spindle. He arrived on March 27, 1944, and was deported on April 13, 1944, on the same convoy as Simon Veille and Ginette Colinka. And he didn't come back from deportation; he had Fourteen years old, so little chance of returning. And that's what we find on a number of these tiles. We found them particularly in the departure staircases, where the internees were transferred the day before their deportation. So they knew they were going east. They didn't know for how long or if they would return. And they left, we don't know why, but there you have it, for various personal reasons,
a trace of life. And on this one in particular, someone wrote "I'm coming back" and a signature, and it's actually Fernan Bloc, and he did indeed return; he survived. There you go. But there are others, of course, who didn't return in most cases. We also have drawings that were made, drawings sometimes that we can't identify. This one, for example, we don't know who made this drawing. He depicted a Jewish man because he has the star, he's wearing a kippah and carrying a menorah. He has his bag. Back. So, is he being deported? Is he arriving at Drancy? Yeah, it's true that it's a bit of a cliché, with the big nose and so on. There's a mocking side to it, don't you
think? We don't know, the problem is we don't know who Léo is, but Léo, who we don't know, saw it on the propaganda posters, as we've seen since the beginning of the video, who wrote that? So, it's not very certain, either it was written like that to, let's say, give the rules and regulations to the internees-some people think it might have been the internees themselves who wrote it so that future internees would know the rules and not be punished because the rules weren't very clear. And in fact, any rule that isn't respected can mean 8 days in the camp prison, 30 days in the prison from the camp. So, it's best to know that you shouldn't leave your room after 10 a.m.
There you go, this is interesting too, these are the German-French posters. Another attempted murder was committed in August 1942 against a person loyal to the occupying forces. With this act, the number of victims rose to a total of two dead and three wounded. Consequently, I ordered the deportation of 50 people. Okay. This was posted all over the city, on the walls. As soon as there was sabotage or an German who was murdered, in retaliation, there were either X people shot, or X people deported and so on. Whoa! You can't display everything because there's so much, is that it? Or not? No, no, they are all digitized. This is a propaganda poster for the Nazi party.
Ah, the NSDAP. There you have it, all men for Hitler. We want National Socialism. I think it was during the 195-1928 elections with the famous NSDAP here. It's true that we realize there are still a huge number of archives. We could almost make an entire YouTube video on this part of the moral of choice. So feel free to tell me in the comments if you want a second video. We can prepare all of this together and discover even more things. So, we have another plate here. Beneath this 1.50m deep alley is the tunnel used for the escape from the Drancy camp. 70 internees divided into three teams worked joyfully through the night for its realization. Begun in September 1943. 36m long, it was
discovered by the Nazis in November 1943 and was never completed. He was 3 meters short of reaching freedom. There, beneath our feet, there really is a tunnel. That's exactly it. The tunnel foundations are beneath our feet. They ran from the basement at the far end of the camp to the outside. They were supposed to get out on the other side of the barbed wire and theoretically allow the escape of the thousands of prisoners who were in the camp. Unfortunately, it is believed that there has been a denunciation. The SS commandant of the camp will return to the camp, discover the tunnel and torture and deport those responsible, some of whom escaped from the
deportation convoy and were able to tell their story. Wow! Is it possible to access the tunnel or not Unfortunately, we cannot access the tunnel because this gymnasium was built. It has been covered over and so it is actually under our feet but unfortunately not visible to us. It would be incredible to be able to see the tunnel like that. Not necessarily to get access to it, but you know, to have a small glass roof to see it through. That would be crazy. Especially since it is a symbol of Jewish resistance who do not give up and who want to save absolutely everyone, including the men, children, women and so on who are in this camp. So, we're going to go into the stairwell from which we'll see
one of the prisons in the camp, so into the basement. And then, it's there. Wow! So here, in the prison, that's it, that's where inmates are sent who have committed an offense which we think they may have committed an offense such as cigarette trafficking, stealing peelings from the kitchen, not going into custody when a policeman passes by. Is it open to the public or not? It is not open to the public. We are open for Heritage Days. How do we know it was a prison? Are there any remains, any evidence? Not only do we have testimonies, but above all we have remains. We have traces left by the internees, including this one which is quite exceptional. There are several Stars
of David, therefore Maganes David and a prayer in Hebrew. This prayer is the Israel pattern, which is the most important prayer in Judaism. So these are clearly Jewish internees who left these prayers behind. And we also have, it seems to me, a drawing here, a head that was drawn in the same way, we don't know by whom. And then on the bricks, there are lots of names and dates. So for example here, OK. Paris, Wednesday the 20th, and a name we couldn't decipher. Schment. Yeah, Schmenti. We don't know. We tried to search. We don't know. We have the letter L in a heart here. It looks a little bit like a love message or a monogram. In any case, nobody here has
access to it. It's locked. So nobody, there are no young people who could come down today. Oh no. Especially since, in fact, they were all photographed more than 20 years ago. And what we also often find are bars like this. So, the people who count the number of days. How many prisoners can be crammed in here? So, it varies quite a bit and above all we unfortunately don't have figures to continue, but around 20-30, there are about twenty or thirty people in this small room here. No window and therefore no window not for the one where indeed no window, no skylight. We're not 100% sure if it's lit or not, but uh, we don't have enough information to know. We know that overall they have nothing to eat and we also know that
most of the people who are imprisoned in the camp are subsequently deported. So generally if someone is locked up it's so they can then be on the next departure list. And we also know that some prisons are used for torture, that there is torture, there are whippings, gunshots, gravel being thrown and so on in the face both by the gendarmes but also by the SS obviously who are in the camp. The SS is also present in the camp. Quite. There aren't many of them. There are fewer than 10 of them. There are many more gendarmes, around 300, and the violence is perpetrated by both the gendarmes and the SS. So here we have another plate in front of us. You were telling me that normally, we should pay attention to Camille Mathieu.
So, Camille Mathieu was one of the gendarmes who watched over the Rany camp and among the approximately 300 gendarmes who watched over the camp, he is the only one who, as far as we know, saved eight Jews from the Rancier camp by having them extracted from the camp and hiding them thanks to his wife Denise and his mother. This is exceptional. He was dismissed as a result of that, he went into resistance. He was very fortunate not to have been deported and as a result he is recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. So a non-Jew who saved Jews during the war and his wife Donise, we must not forget that. Of course, who also participated, who absolutely participated, who was fundamental in the rescue of these eight Jews.
historically led to massacres and genocides. We are whistleblowers. We are here to tell people, "But don't forget what happened, it's not so far from you. It happened in our country." Well, we're here to tell you what kind of effect racism can have. When tomorrow the survivors of the choice have disappeared, the only evidence of what happened will be the archives and YouTube videos. Ah well, I'm counting on you, Tibo, okay? But we also work on the history of genocides. You will see that there is an exhibition on the Armenian genocide, on the genocide of the Herrer and the Namar. But here we are comparing crimes
of the same level, you know, to understand the processes, the common points, the differences and also to show that all victims have the right to the same respect. And that's what's very important. If you come here in April, you would see the community of Tutsi survivors who come to the memorial to commemorate the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. He considers the memorial to be their memorial as well. It's not just about focusing on horror, it's also about telling the story of the lives and photos you saw in the children's memorial. These children, most of them, are smiling, they are, well, these are the photos, the wedding photos. That's what we want to work on. Not just saying that they became Jewish at the time of Hitler and
Pétain's rise to power. They were Jewish before. They are alive; they had a life before. And that is why we fight anti-Semitism in a fight that is also against racism. There is a specific word that designates hatred of Jews because hatred of Jews is thousands of years old, but both must be taught. Neither is more serious than the other. We must fight against both. And that is also the role of the memorial in the present. Perfect. Thank you so much. With great pleasure.
