The Shoah Memorial salutes the memory of Jacques Chirac, who passed away this Thursday, September 26, 2019

The Shoah Memorial honours the commitment of this President of the Republic who had delivered on 16 July 1995 the important and courageous speech known as the Vel d'Hiv, officially recognizing the responsibility of France in the persecution of the Jews during the Second World War.

This speech had ended 50 years of denial allowing our country to confront its history and make a huge leap in historical knowledge and education. This speech was central and had important repercussions in many areas, opening of archives, integration of this history into school curricula, strengthening of the right to reparation, creation of the Study Mission on the spoliation of the Jews of France, also known as Mission MATTEOLI, the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliations (CIVS) and the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah.

In 2007, Jacques Chirac presided over the ceremony of entry of the Righteous into the Pantheon with Simone Veil then president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, thus paying tribute to the French who had participated in saving the Jewish population of France, in opposition to the anti-Semitic regime of Vichy, which had 'assisted the German occupier'.

Very attached to the educational work of the Memorial, as Mayor of Paris, he had always accompanied and supported the Shoah Memorial. As Head of State, he encouraged the deposit of the "Jewish file" at the Memorial and presided over the inauguration ceremony of this space on 5 December 1997. In January 2005, he presided over the inauguration ceremony of the renovated and enlarged Memorial, alongside Simone Veil and Éric de Rothschild, president of the Shoah Memorial.

Find the images and videos of Jacques Chirac inaugurating alongside Simone Veil the Shoah Memorial in January 2005 as well as the round table that took place at the Shoah Memorial on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Vel d'Hiv speech on May 31, 2015, round table in the presence of Christine Albanel, Henri Hajdenberg and Serge Klarsfeld notably.