Thursday, September 25, 2008

Mémorial de la Déportation

I visited the Mémorial de la Déportation on Ile de la Cite. It was designed by French architect Georges-Henri Pingusson.
It is dedicated to the 200.000 Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, gays, criminals, gypsys and the mentally ill who were deported during WW2.
This is a quote from Antoine St. Exupery that appears there:

This wall of tiny lights represents the 200,000 deportees:


We underwent a thorough search before being admitted to this subterranean monument.

4 comments:

  1. What was the purpose of the search?

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm curious as well about the search you underwent -- when I visited the memorial the year we met, I just walked in, there were no attendants at all.

    They must have had some vandalism?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sorry, Fixed or Broken, I misread your question and have deleted my crazy reply.
    They searched my purse and ran a metal detector over us. Nothing really invasive of course. I've had a similar search at the Monde Arab Centre. At La Ste. Chapelle, the Louvre and other sites they run your bags through a machine. It's become pretty standard I think.

    ReplyDelete