History of the Holocaust Memorial

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

Isaac Schneersohn © Holocaust Memorial

On 28 April 1943, while France is occupied, Isaac Schneersohn, a Russian industrialist, gathered in the apartment he rents on Rue Bizanet in Grenoble 40 activists and leaders of different tendencies of the Jewish community to create an important archive, in the clandestinity.
While the Jewish community of France is being hunted by the Nazi occupier, who is replaced by the police of government of Vichy, the objective is to set up a structure that would gather evidence of persecution of the Jews to testify and demand justice at the end of the war. Isaac Schneersohn is actually gathering the evidence that will give birth to the international criminal justice during the Nuremberg trial a few years later.

After this meeting in Grenoble, the founders of this archive, now called Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, began to collect documents, But their activity was stopped by the German invasion in September 1943 of the area previously occupied by the Italians, in which Grenoble was located. Schneersohn joins the resistance in the Dordogne and makes contacts with the French Resistance which will prove useful later. As the battles for the liberation of France began, Isaac Schneersohn and his team joined Paris to save from destruction and sequestration the archives emanating from Vichy and the Nazi occupier.

Retrieval of the archives of the Gestapo and Vichy

Aided by the resistance and thanks to the flair of Isaac Schneersohn and Léon Poliakov in charge of the Research Service of the archives, the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (CDJC) gets its hands on valuable archives in often rocambolesque conditions, such as those of the CGQJ, the German embassy in Paris, the General Staff, the Vichy Government’s general delegation and especially those of the anti-Jewish department of the Gestapo, one of the few recovered in Europe.

As soon as the hostilities ended, the CDJC began to classify its archives in order to study the process that led to the destruction of the Jews of France. He founded 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 history journal of the Shoah, le Monde Juif.

The Documentation Centre and the trial of war criminals

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

The activity of the CDJC in Nuremberg has earned him the recognition of Attorney General Telford Taylor who allows Léon Poliakov and Joseph Billig to draw on the archives of this first major international trial. This role of helping justice, inaugurated during the Nuremberg trials, continued during the trials of those responsible for and accomplices in 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 with an archive piece, the telex d'Izieu, which allowed it to proceed with the indictment of Klaus Barbie, the head of the Lyon Gestapo, for crimes against humanity.

From the documentation centre to the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr

Inauguration of the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr 1953 © Holocaust Memorial

In 1950, Isaac Schneersohn decided to create a memorial tomb intended for Holocaust victims: The Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr (MMJI). This idea initially aroused the opposition of a part of the Jewish community which did not want «an institution turned to the past».
Isaac Schneersohn set about founding a large sponsorship committee with many personalities. When the head of government of the very new state of Israel is asked, David Ben-Gurion It is clear that the first Memorial dedicated to the Jewish victims of Nazism will see the light of day in Paris. Very soon, the state of Israel decides to erect its own memorial, Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem, with whom the CDJC establishes privileged links. The foundation stone of the Paris Memorial is laid on 17 May 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 are solemnly deposited on 24 February 1957 in the crypt of the Memorial by the Grand Rabbi Jacob Kaplan.

Classified as a historic 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 Day of Deportation] organized by the State or the Jewish community.

The inauguration of the Holocaust Memorial in 2005

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

The development of the Centre de recherche sur la Shoah, which became one of the first in Europe, as well as the activities of the Memorial, especially for school audiences, led the Board of Directors of the Mémorial-CDJC to propose a new step: the creation of the Holocaust Memorial.

The CDJC, which moved to Paris after the Liberation and was placed in 1956 in the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr, still occupies a natural place within the walls of the Memorial today and is open for research. With the support of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, the State, the City of Paris and the Region of Île-de-France, the Memorial has a project to expand its building.

The new Memorial

Completed at the end of 2004, this extension has allowed us to offer more space for researchers in reading rooms, to deploy the permanent exhibition on the history of the Shoah, to create a multimedia space, 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 Holocaust Memorial is both a museum offering a permanent exhibition, two temporary exhibitions each year and many cultural events (meetings, screenings, testimonies), an archive centre open to research and a place of memory and transmission.

In 2012, the Holocaust Memorial opened a museum in Drancy, opposite the city of Muette, a former internment camp. Place of history and transmission, complementary to the Paris Memorial, this centre is intended to present the history of the Drancy camp.

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

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

In Italy, where the Memorial de la Shoah has a permanent correspondent since 2010, it 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, among others, the memory trips and the Summer University, and in the USA where temporary exhibitions are offered to the American public through local partnerships.

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