The permanent exhibition is located on level -1 of the Memorial and presents a chronological and thematic journey consisting of twelve sequences that retrace the history of the Jews of France during the Holocaust.
Photographs, texts, original documents, facsimiles, objects, films, sounds... address the history of the Shoah. Upon entering the exhibition, visitors can follow on their left the itinerary concerning France, which includes individual fates, while on their right is displayed history on a European scale. A conception that allows for permanent back and forth between history and testimony, between collective history and individual history.
© JC Boussiquet
Several levels of reading and deepening are proposed: the first on the panels, the second in display cases and the last one in albums and interactive terminals arranged on desks. Six short films punctuate the route. Spread throughout the exhibition, individual fates are evoked in small horizontal display cases each containing a photograph and biography of an deported person, objects and documents that have belonged to him.
By describing the operating mechanisms that led to the extermination of nearly six million Jews, the exhibition aims to give everyone the tools to reflect on history and to ask questions about the present, in order to remain vigilant against a possible return to intolerance, whatever it may be.
© Florence Brochoire
Sequence 1
Sequence 2
Sequence 3
Sequence 4
Sequence 5
Sequence 6
Sequence 7
Sequence 8
Sequence 9
Sequence 10
Sequence 11
Sequence 12
Closing off the permanent exhibition, the Children’s Memorial to date includes 4,920 photographs of deported Jewish children. These photographs, listed in alphabetical order and collected by Serge Klarsfeld and the Shoah Memorial, are taken from the book Mémorial des enfants juifs déportés de France (Memorial of the Jewish children deported from France).
The Jews of France in the Shoah,
Catalogue of the permanent exhibition at the Shoah Memorial.
