Patarei Prison: joint statement
A delegation from the Memorial of the Shoah and the Association of families and friends of deportees from convoy 73 has just met with the Estonian Minister of Justice, Urmas Reinsalu, and the historians of the Estonian Institute for Memory, Meelis Maripuu and Toomas Hiio, in order to discuss the future of the Patarei prison in Tallinn.
The creation of a museum of the crimes of communism is planned. A joint declaration, also signed by the Sons and Daughters of the Jewish deportees from France, was issued on this occasion in order to recall the importance of preserving the memory of the deportees of convoy 73.
These meetings took place on the sidelines of the journey of memory in the footsteps of convoy 73 in Lithuania and Estonia, from 7 to 11 May 2018, organized by the Shoah Memorial and the Association of families and friends of the deportees of convoy 73.
JOINT DECLARATION
Tallinn, 9 May 2018
Since 1993, families and survivors of the Holocaust have come from France to honour the memory of the Jewish deportees of convoy 73 who left the camp of Drancy on 15 May 1944 towards Lithuania and Estonia. Out of 878 men, 856 were murdered, only 22 were supposed 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 lumbering 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 of France and those of many countries, starting with those of Estonia.
The association of the Sons and Daughters of the Jewish deportees of France, chaired by historian and lawyer Serge Klarsfeld, had a plaque placed 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 Convoi 73 and the Shoah Memorial jointly supported the creation of a memorial at the Lasnamäe airfield site in 2014.
The history of the Patarei prison is not limited to its criminal use by the Nazis during the Second World War. 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 of the 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 by paying tribute to the victims.
The memories of different crimes in 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 Sons and Daughters of the Jewish Deportees of France
The Association The Families and Friends of the Deportees of Convoy 73
