Launch of the work for the creation of a new memorial site within the old station of Pithiviers (Loiret)

Following a partnership agreement signed in May 2017, the Shoah Memorial and the SNCF will proceed with the creation of a place of memory within the old Pithiviers passenger station (Loiret). Between 1941 and 1943, 16,000 Jews were interned in the the camps in Pithiviers and Beaune la Rolande. By the stations of these two places, people arrested because Jews arrived or left from or to internment camps in the Paris region, particularly from Drancy camp. Among them are the 4,400 children who have been victims of Hiv’s Vel’ Raid. 8,100 Jews were deported directly from Loiret to the Auschwitz Birkenau camp in 8 convoys.

The old station of Pithiviers is one of the emblematic places of internment and deportation of the Jews of France, 6 convoys left from Pithiviers station. The platforms of this station were the last contact of the deported internees with the soil of France.
Within the walls of Pithiviers station, an information and education center will be opened in 2020. With a surface area of 400 m 2, it will have an exhibition space evoking the history of this station, centered on the internment of Jews and their deportation. Teaching rooms will allow to welcome schoolchildren and groups and develop educational activities.

It will also provide a reception point for these groups near the traces of the former Pithiviers internment camp destroyed after the war, and the monument which now includes the names of deported internees.

This place, which will be supported and animated by the Shoah Memorial, will operate in synergy with the Cercil – Children’s Memorial Museum of the Vel’ of Hiv'. Located in Orléans, this museum created in 2011 has a resource center and a permanent exhibition on the camps of Loiret. This institution was attached to the Shoah Memorial in January 2018.

The first stone will be laid in spring 2019, the work will be completed in 2020.