A delegation from the Shoah Memorial and the Association of Families and Friends of the Deportees of
The creation of a
These meetings took place on the sidelines of
Tallinn, 9 May 2018
Since 1993, families and survivors of the Shoah come from France to honor the memory of the Jewish deportees of convoy 73 who left the camp of Drancy on 15 May 1944 towards Lithuania and Estonia. Of 878 men, 856 were murdered, only 22 were to return to their homeland in 1945.
300 of these men were transferred here by the Nazis, to the Patarei prison. In inhumane conditions, they were subjected to logging chores from which they did not return and assigned to the construction of the Lasnamäe airfield.
In these places, we wanted to recall the tragedy experienced by the deportees from France and those from many countries, starting with those from Estonia.
The association of the sons and daughters of the Jewish deportees from France, chaired by historian and lawyer Serge Klarsfeld, installed a plaque on the prison wall. The association Les Familles et Amis des Déportés du Convoi 73 is behind the memorial erected in 2010. The association Families and Friends of the Deportees of Convoy 73 and the Shoah Memorial jointly supported the creation of a commemorative monument at the Lasnamäe airfield site in 2014.
The history of Patarei prison is not limited to its criminal use by the Nazis during World War II. We are indeed on a site of plural memory. But the singularity of the fate of the Jewish deportees in this place cannot be ignored or minimized.
As the memorial project at Patarei prison takes shape, we reaffirm the imperative need to preserve the traces of the victims of the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators as well as the transmission in all its forms of this singular history through a strict reminder of the facts, through historical research, by teaching and paying tribute to the victims.
Memories of different crimes at the same place do not oppose or exclude each other. On the contrary, they complement each other while recalling their specificity.
The Shoah Memorial
The Association The Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France
The Association of Families and Friends of Deportees on Convoy 73
