On the occasion of the National Day of Remembrance for the Victims and Heroes of the Deportation, marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps, the Shoah Memorial invites you to the exceptional online screening of the film Les héritiers de Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, with Ariane Ascaride, Ahmed Dramé and Léon Zyguel in his own role.
The National Day of Remembrance for the Victims and Heroes of the Deportation was established by the French Republic in 1954, on the initiative of the Remembrance Network, an association also at the origin of the Memorial of the Martyrs of the Deportation on the Ile de la Cité in Paris.
Every year, the official procession goes to the Shoah Memorial and then to the Deportation Martyrs Memorial, before reviving the flame of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe.
The distribution of the film is accompanied by educational resources, designed with the help of Anne Anglès, the teacher who inspired the film:
THE HOLOCAUST AND THE CONCENTRATION CAMP UNIVERSE
The extermination of the Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War caused the death of about 6 million people. This genocide is called in Hebrew Shoah, catastrophe.
The persecution of Jews is an essential component of the policy of the Third Reich, based on an ancient anti-Judaism and a racial vision with political and supposedly biological foundations, justifying the existence of races and their inequality. The Jews are excluded by the Nazis from the human species and assimilated to parasites that it would be necessary to extirpate from a society now based on the supremacy of a supposed race called «Aryan». From 1941, the Jews of Europe became the target of a physical extermination on the scale of the entire continent, implemented by homicidal gassing, mass shootings and organized famine. The genocide of the European Jews thus takes place on the fringes of the Nazi concentration camp system, in the killing centers of Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka, not without these criminal policies sometimes intertwining, notably at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
With the arrival to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler, in January 1933, a dictatorship is gradually established, suppressing freedoms and repressing opposition. The concentration camps became one of the essential instruments of terror used by the Third Reich to annihilate resistance, instil Nazi principles by force, and get rid of individuals deemed harmful or deviant.
The camps thus aim to serve the ideological and security interests of the Nazi regime as it evolves.
The pogrom in November 1938, described as 'Kristallnacht' by Nazi propaganda, was marked by the mass arrest of German and Austrian Jews, and their internment in the camps of Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. The survivors are released a few months later against the commitment to permanently leave Germany with their families robbed of their property.
After the successive annexations and the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, the population of the camps expanded and became internationalized.
With the development of a «total war» in 1942, the camps will also serve as a labor pool for the war industry. Destined to be murdered, hundreds of thousands of Jews are temporarily left alive to contribute to these economic objectives and integrate into the concentration camp universe.
The advance of the Allied troops provokes the evacuation of detainees towards the heart of the Third Reich during "death marches". Of the 700,000 detainees listed in January 1945, 250,000 to 300,000 die during these transfers due to their extreme exhaustion or are victims of massacres.
The camp of Buchenwald and its external kommandos thus become one of the main destinations of these columns, which then include more than 30,000 Jewish detainees out of more than 110,000 registered prisoners. On April 11, 1945, the American army discovered in Buchenwald among the deported survivors a thousand Jewish children and teenagers.
THE RESISTANCE IN THE CAMPS
Despite the oppression, the living conditions and the dangers encountered in the Nazi camps, clandestine resistance was able to establish itself, in multiple forms and with varying importance. It is at Buchenwald that it develops in the most advanced manner, around communist activists, notably managing to overthrow the prisoners of common law under the control of the internal administration, to prepare for an insurrection or to take charge of the children by grouping them and organizing solidarity in their favor to allow their survival.
LEON ZYGUEL AND HIS FAMILY
Léon ZYGUEL. Photo Coll. Serge Klarsfeld
Born in 1927 into a non-practicing Jewish family, Léon Zyguel grew up in the 11thth arrondissement of Paris. The occupation and the first round of roundups signal the end of recklessness for Léon and his 5 brothers and sisters. His father, Aron, is raided on August 20, 1941. His mother resolves to have her children move to the southern zone. Arrested in the Landes near the demarcation line, the 4 largest including Léon are interned at the camp of Mérignac. One of Léon’s brothers, Marcel, manages to escape. With Maurice, born in 1925, and Hélène, born in 1922, Léon is transferred to the camp of Drancy where he finds his father Aron.
Then transferred to the camp of Pithiviers, they are deported to the camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the convoy of September 21, 1942. Hélène is gassed upon arrival. Aron, Maurice and Léon are selected for forced labour. Aron, whose fragile health is deteriorating due to the conditions of detention, is assassinated. In January 1945, the two brothers were evacuated during the "death marches" to the camp at Buchenwald. Placed under the protection of communist detainees, they join the clandestine organization and take part in the liberation of the camp on 11 April 1945.
Driven by his desire to preserve his dignity, his pride in passing from the status of racial deportee to that of resistance fighter, Léon returned to Paris in May 1945. Aged 18, he finds, with Maurice, his mother and 3 of his brothers and sister. He becomes a leather worker, marries and lives in Montreuil where he continues his militant commitment within the communist party. Revulsed by racism and negationism, he actively participates in the transmission of the memory of the Shoah and testifies at the Papon trial in January 1998. He is one of the initiators of the Tlemcen Committee in Paris to commemorate the deported Jewish children. He dies in January 2015.
MINI-QUESTIONNAIRE:
What is the difference between Auschwitz and Buchenwald camps?
What are the main stages in the life of Léon Zyguel?
At the camp, how was solidarity organized to help the "children of Buchenwald"?
Among the «children of Buchenwald», mention some personalities who have become famous.
In which competition does the teacher want to involve her students? When was it created?
What sources does the class rely on to nourish its reflection and work?
What are the cinematographic means implemented to show that one moves from a class made up of antagonistic students to a group federated and mobilized to reach the end of their project?
VIDEO OF ANNE ANGLÈS:
Anne Anglès, history-geography teacher, looks back at the educational project conducted as part of the National Competition for Resistance and Deportation in 2008-2009, at the origin of the film The Heirs.
