PITHIVIERS: THE REHABILITATION OF A NEW PLACE OF MEMORY, 80 YEARS AFTER THE ROUND-UP OF THE VEL D'HIV

The station of Pithiviers: a major place in the history of the Shoah in France

Between 1941 and 1943, 16,000 Jews were interned in the camps of Pithiviers and Beaune la Rolande. Through the stations of these two places, people arrested because Jews arrived or left from or to internment camps in the Paris region, particularly from the Drancy camp. Among them are the 4,400 children victims of the Vel d'Hiv roundup. 8100 Jews were deported directly from Loiret to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in 8 convoys.

The former Pithiviers station is one of the emblematic places of the internment and deportation of the Jews of France, 6 convoys left from the Pithiviers station. The platforms of this station will have been the last contact of the deported internees with the soil of France.

JACQUES FREDJ, DIRECTOR OF THE SHOAH MEMORIAL

Between 1941 and 1943, more than 16,000 Jews, including nearly 4,500 children, arrived by train at the stations of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande to be interned in the camps of Loiret managed by the French administration, under the control of the Nazis.

From 14 May 1941, these same places saw the internees, the families who came to visit them, their couriers and the parcels arrive or leave for months.

Among the people arrested during the roundup of 16 and 17 July 1942, 7,600 were transferred to the camps in Loiret. For many, these victims are women and children whose fathers had been arrested in May 1941 and who were going to precede them in the deportation and death at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Separated from their parents, left in great distress, more than 3000 children are then transferred to the Drancy camp to be deported as well.

After the stations of Bourget-Drancy and Bobigny, it is from these quays that the greatest number of deported Jews left our country, with the complicity of the French state. During the year 1942, the stations of Pithiviers and Beaune la Rolande were the last contact with the soil of France for more than 8100 Jewish deportees.

They were the witnesses of this tragic story and of the workings of the implacable genocidal system set up by the Third Reich.

Thanks to a long-standing committed partnership with the SNCF, the role of the stations of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande in the internment and deportation of Jews from France is at the heart of this new exhibition, installed in the old passenger station of Pithiviers.

By retracing the long history of these stations, which had participated in the development of the region at the end of the 19th century, until they were closed to passenger traffic a century later, this exhibition also intends to show the inscription in everyday life of familiar places that turn into a mass crime on a European scale during the Second World War. It also shows the long and difficult work of the collective memory to fully reconstruct this story, thanks in particular to the commitment of personalities such as Serge Klarsfeld, Henry Bulawko and Hélène Mouchard-Zay, founder of the Cercil.

The exhibition designed with the scenographer Martin Michel preserves the building designed in 1872 and rehabilitated by the SNCF. She does not intend to recreate a setting, she carries the history and memory of the places by showing the global context in which they are part.

This place entirely turned towards education is intended to complement the Shoah Memorial in Paris, a general place on the history of the Holocaust, the Drancy Memorial located opposite the former internment camp which has become a hub for the deportation of the Jews of France, as well as the Cercil in Orléans which restores the history of the camps of Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande and Jargeau.

All these museums and places of memory supported today by the Memorial aim to allow everyone to fully discover or rediscover this page of our common history, to raise awareness about the consequences of intolerance, racism and antisemitism as well as the necessary defense of republican values on which our democracy is based.

A UNIQUE SCENOGRAPHY THOUGHT BY MARTIN MICHEL

The central objective of the permanent exhibition is to explain the role of the station of Pithiviers and Beaune la Rolande in the Shoah, which its walls are the witnesses.

The station before renovation appeared to us in a state of timelessness, an in-between mixing eras, arrangements, accidents and degradations. The atmosphere was strong without being really characterized, as in many of these suspended places. We were in an abandoned station, the vegetation began to invade the rooms. The history of the station was visible with the naked eye, from the 1900 counters to the 1970 waiting room through the 1930 scoreboard. The pathways had fallen asleep in the grasses and shrubs.

This contact with the site impressed us with the idea of a sensitive scenography that would maintain these sensations almost palpable in time and diffuse memory. A light device that would limit the quantity and impact of the constructions necessary for the dissemination of speech. We imagined stripping the walls while keeping traces of this past time, unifying them by a kind of general glaze and printing on this surface the texts and images testifying to the role of the station.

The renovation project proved to be complex, with asbestos and lead present in the floors and walls. The removal of large pieces of furniture would be complete, the walls would be scraped to the stones and the floors destroyed. It was certain that once the station had been de-amitated, defoliated, cleaned and lightened of most of its facilities, it would have lost a good part of this evocative power.

Taking our part of these deposits and modifications, we told ourselves that the station would nevertheless find its first volumes in their simplest devices. Thus, for the creation of the museographic itinerary, we wanted to play with this new void, follow the thread of this simplicity with a sobriety close to materials and traces.

We imagined the rooms as a timeless space, linking the present / side streets to the past / side roads in which the floors and walls would be maintained as close as possible to their mineral state according to the deposit, without general repainting or reconstruction, at most the maintenance of some historical elements.

In order, in this new context, to allow the visitor to feel the station and its particular history, we have favored sensitive materials and the stripping of spaces, as close as possible to the new volumes.

Also in order to find the dynamism of a station and that of history, we have given an important place to the animated image, broadcast on screen and large-format video projections on the walls.

Archival images have the power to plunge the visitor into an emotion that allows him to go beyond the words of the historical narrative present on the peripheral panels of the rooms.

We imagined the first room, formerly the ticket office hall, as an entrance that is both soft by the subdued atmosphere and strong by the broadcast of a large-format film evoking the station at the beginning of the 20th century.

The next room has been preserved in its vast station hall volume with its large windows and hanging lights. The simple arrangement of a central partition was enough to share it in 2 without breaking it, allowing the course to unfold up to the last room without revealing itself brutally.

The first space dedicated to the history of the station from the greenway roundup to the present day, is punctuated by a scenographic speech on its 4 sides whose highlight is the large-format projection of a film about the progress of the roundup.

The second space dedicated to the Shoah includes a suspended ceiling and the covering of tiles from the 2 windows present, thus isolating the visitor and overcoming the difficulty of embodying the tragic break of deportation, even though there are no images available, by promoting its concentration on texts, archives and written testimonies.