History of the Shoah Memorial

In 1943, the objective: to document the persecution of the Jews

Isaac Schneersohn © Shoah Memorial

April 28, 1943, while France is occupied, Isaac Schneersohn, an industrialist of Russian origin, gathered in the apartment he rented on rue Designate and in Grenoble, 40 activists and leaders from different tendencies of the Jewish community in order to create an important archives, in the clandestinity.
While the the Jewish community of France is being hunted down by the Nazi occupier, assisted by the police of Vichy government, the objective is to set up a structure that would gather evidence of the persecution of Jews in order to testify and demand justice as soon as the war is over. Isaac Schneersohn is actually gathering the evidence that will give rise to the international criminal justice during the Nuremberg trial a few years later.

After this meeting in Grenoble, the founders of this archive fund, now called the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation, began to collect documents, but their activity was stopped by the German invasion in September 1943 of the area until then occupied by the Italians. area in which Grenoble was located. Schneersohn joined the resistance in the Dordogne and established contacts with the French Resistance, which later proved useful. While the fighting for the liberation of France has begun, Isaac Schneersohn and his team join Paris in order to save from destruction and sequestration the archival funds emanating from Vichy and the Nazi occupiers.

Recovery of the archives of the Gestapo and Vichy

Helped by resistance fighters and thanks to the flair of Isaac Schneersohn and Léon Poliakov in charge of the Archives Research Service, the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC) gets its hands on valuable archives in often incredible conditions, such as those of the CGQJ, from the German embassy in Paris, the general staff, the general delegation of the Vichy government and especially those of the anti-Jewish service of the Gestapo, one of the few recovered in Europe.

At the end of hostilities, the CDJC undertook to classify its archives in order to study the process that had led to the destruction of the Jews of France. He created his own publishing house, published his first works on the internment camps (Joseph Weill, Contribution à l'histoire des camps d'internement dans l'anti-France, Paris, CDJC) and in 1946 acquired the first historical review of the Shoah, Le Monde Juif.

The Documentation Centre and the trial of war criminals

In parallel with this work of history and memory, the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine is requested by the French government, through Edgar Faure, to support the French pleadings at the Nuremberg trials. The CDJC transported its documentation to Nuremberg and was permanently represented during international and American trials, becoming one of the official recipients of all documents then in circulation.

The activity deployed by the CDJC in Nuremberg earned him the recognition of the General Prosecutor Telford Taylor who authorized Léon Poliakov and Joseph Billig to draw on the archives of this first major international trial. This role of aid to justice inaugurated at the Nuremberg trials continued during the trials of those responsible and accomplices of the final solution in Germany, France and Israel where Georges Wellers, the scientific head of the CDJC is called to testify at the Eichmann trial.

In the 1980s, the CDJC provided the French justice system with an archive document, the telex of Izieu, which allowed it to proceed with the indictment of Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo of Lyon, for crimes against humanity.

From the documentation center to the Jewish Unknown Martyr Memorial

Inauguration of the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr 1953 © Shoah Memorial

In 1950, Isaac Schneersohn decided to create a tombeau-Memorial intended for Victims of the Shoah: The Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr (MMJI). This idea first aroused the opposition of a part of the Jewish community who did not want "an institution turned towards the past".
Isaac Schneersohn then set about founding a large sponsorship committee comprising many personalities. When the head of government of the very recent State of Israel is asked, David Ben Gurion becomes aware that the first Memorial dedicated to the Jewish victims of Nazism will see the day in Paris. So very quickly, the State of Israel decides to erect its own Memorial, Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem, with whom the CDJC establishes privileged ties. The first stone of the Paris Memorial is laid on the May 17, 1953, on land donated by the City of Paris. Several countries, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Yugoslavia contribute to the construction of the Memorial by donating works of art.

The crypt of the Memorial

The building was finally inaugurated on 30 October 1956 in the presence of 50 delegations from Jewish communities around the world and many political and religious figures from all over Europe. Ashes from the extermination camps and the Warsaw Ghetto were solemnly deposited on 24 February 1957 in the crypt of the Memorial by Chief Rabbi Jacob Kaplan.

Classified as a historical monument in 1991, the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr hosts every year the main ceremonies related to the Shoah [Warsaw Ghetto, discovery of the Auschwitz camp, Hazkarah, National Deportation Day] organized by the state or the Jewish community.

The inauguration of the Shoah Memorial in 2005

Jacques Chirac and Simone Veil at the inauguration of the Shoah Memorial in 2005

The development of the Shoah research centre, which has become one of the very first in Europe, as well as that of the Memorial’s activities, particularly aimed at school audiences, have led the Memorial-CDJC’s board of directors to propose a new phase: the creation of the Shoah Memorial.

The CDJC, which had moved to Paris after the Liberation and found its place in 1956 in the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr, still occupies a natural place today within the walls of the Memorial and is open to research. With the support of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, the State, the City of Paris and the Île-de-France Region, the Memorial has embarked on a project to expand its building.

The new Memorial

Completed at the end of 2004, this extension has made it possible to offer more space for researchers in the reading rooms, to deploy the permanent exhibition on the history of the Shoah, to create a multimedia area, an auditorium and to erect outside the building "the Wall of names" where the names of all the Jews deported from France were engraved.

Today, the Shoah Memorial is both a museum offering a permanent exhibition, two temporary exhibitions each year and many cultural events (meetings, screenings, testimonies), an archive center open to research and a place of memory and transmission.

In 2012, the Shoah Memorial opened a museum in Drancy, opposite the city of La Muette, former internment camp. A place of history and transmission, complementary to the Paris Memorial, this centre aims to present the history of the Drancy camp.

The Shoah Memorial is also present in the region and abroad. In Toulouse, the regional office for southern France relays the actions of the Memorial by relying on local partners and regional heritage. In 2016, the first university in the south of France was organized for professors in Toulouse.

Since 2018, the Shoah Memorial has expanded regionally with the CERCI - Children’s Memorial Museum of the Vel d'Hiv, then the memorial site of Chambon-sur-Lignon in 2020, the Jules-Isaac center in 2021, and the Pithiviers train station in July 2022.

In Italy, where it can count on a permanent correspondent since 2010, the Shoah Memorial develops three main types of actions: continuing education, partnerships with the Resistance museums, and an active presence within the university network.

The Memorial is also very present in Poland, with notably memory trips and the Summer University, and in the United States where temporary exhibitions are offered to the American public thanks to local partnerships.

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