Discover the new exhibition "Diplomats facing the Shoah"

Poster created by Mathieu Persan 

This exhibition aims to report and illustrate the role of diplomats regarding the situation of the Jews from 1938 (year of the Evian conference and the Night of Broken Glass) until the end of the Second World War. Thanks to the diplomatic documents that have been saved and some testimonies that historians were able to gather, we discover a world of attentive and experienced observers, while the war shakes Europe.

From photos, official texts, written and oral testimonies, the exhibition will take stock of the state of knowledge concerning these questions: What did the diplomats know? What were their sources? Who acted? How, why, in what context? Conversely, who did not understand, who did not act and why? Is it out of ignorance, inability to understand the magnitude of the tragedy, indifference, willingness to collaborate?

The exhibition will focus on the articulation between what diplomats knew and what they and their governments could do, did or chose not to do. It will finally invite visitors to reflect on the lessons that can be learned from this period, in particular on the difficult question of interference or the creation of international bodies (UN).

Exhibition curators: André Kaspi, Claire Mouradian, Catherine Nicault and Jean-Marc Dreyfus, historians.

Discover the exhibition site 

The Shoah Memorial offers you a series of conferences and meetings around the exhibition starting from February 2022.