Obj. ID: 38466
  Memorials  Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, Paris, France, 1962

Name of Monument

Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation

(Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation)

What/Who is commemorated?

200,000 people deported from France by the Vichy government

Description

The Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation (Deportation Memorial) is located at the eastern tip of the Île de la Cité in Paris. The memorial is shaped like a ship's prow; the crypt is accessible by two staircases and a lowered square protected by a metal portcullis. The crypt leads to a hexagonal rotunda that includes two chapel-like galleries containing earth and bones from concentration camps. The walls display literary excerpts from French authors.

[Cannaday]  “The memorial immediately descends via a staircase composed of rough concrete walls and floors, to an asymmetrical open space.

Hornstein p. 313: “each step down creates a rhythm calculated in the architecture more time and perfect syncopation with what happens before our eyes: our careful movement down a very steep and narrow staircase with unusually high risers is calculated to progressively cancel the Parisian facades until they disappear altogether and all that is left for us to view is the geometrically square tiled white floor enveloped by the whitewashed solid walls of this empty and pinned, somewhat triangular, space. The striking austerity is relieved by a sculptural grille that leads the eye to the tip of the space, which is sliced off and left open with a view of the sand river, reminding us that we are level with the water.” 13 3/13

[Cannaday]  Facing the Seine River, there are seven spear-like, abstract metal art pieces adorned with triangles. The floor of the open space is laid with stone tiles, which lead to the underground portion of the monument. The prison-like feeling continues into the passage.

Roughly dimpled concrete walls cover the corridor, with different dimple patterns on either side. Inside, a domed space is dimly lit by a memorial flame and centered on the metallic floor. Three separate wings break off from the hexagonal, domed room and lead to a tunneled crypt, and two disconnected, confined spaces.

Hornstein p. 315: “the final space is an internal, crypt-like interior space, again accessed by an acutely constricting pair of pylons. Natural light is limited, and artificial light is strategic. A hexagonal space is the site of a tomb of an unknown deportee. A very long and narrow corridor inaccessible to visitors--almost like a crawl space--exhibits 200,000 lighted glass beads on the facing walls. This may refer to the custom in Jewish synagogues of placing a light on the memorial board in memory of deceased relatives.

Across the entrance and above, etched deeply into the stone, is the inscription in French: “Two hundred thousand French citizens lost, exterminated in the Nazi death camps.”

Two galleries traverse the central space. They have low, triangular stone ceilings. The names of concentration camps color encircle the perimeter engraved on triangular copper plaques with red letters embedded deep in the concrete to mark the triangular urns with contain soil and ashes of concentration camp victims that are placed within.

Both ends of the chamber have small empty gated rooms that seem to depict prison cells.  The walls outside of each cell are engraved with poems and texts from famous French writers Louis Aragon, French poet and French Resistance member Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

The enclosed crypt is adorned with triangular recesses and glistening beads. Its floor is laid with earth. The slate ceiling and walls reflect the sparkling glass fragments, symbolizing the lives of those who perished. Within the barred crypt lay the ashes of an unknown deportee from Natzweiler-Struthof, a concentration camp in the Alsace region of France.

Fragments of two poems by Desnos, who was a deportee, are inscribed on the walls. The first consists of the last stanza of a poem written pseudonymously by Desnos and published "underground" in Paris, on Bastille Day 1942, "The Heart that Hated War":

At the exit to the chamber is the injunction, engraved, found at all sites memorializing the victims of the Nazis: "Forgive but never forget."

Inscriptions

Inscription over the entrance, seen from the interior, in French:

PARDONNE, N'OUBLIE PAS

Translation: Forgive and don't forget

 Inscription over the doorway, in French:

AURIGNY GROSS-ROSEN

BERGEN-BELSEN DORA-

ELLRICH REVENSBRUCK

DACHAU ORANIENBURG-

SACHSENHAUSEN

Around the walls of the hexagonal chamber, in French:

POUR QUE VIVE LE SOUVENIR DES DEUX CENT MILLE FRANCAIS SOMBRES DANS LA NUIT ET LE BROUILLARD EXTERMINES DANS LES CAMPS NAZIS

Translation: "Dedicated to the living memory of the 200,000 French deportees sleeping in the night and the fog, exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps."

Circular plaque on the floor of the underground chamber, in French:

ILS ALLÈRENT À L'AUTRE BOUT DE LA TERRE ET ILS N'E SONT JAMAIS REVENUS

Translation: "They descended into the mouth of the earth and they did not return."

Inscription on wall, in French:

CELUI QUI CROYAIT

AU CIEL CELUI QUI

N'Y CROYAIT PAS
TOUS LES DEUX

AIMAIENT LA BELLE
PRISONNIÈRE

DES SOLDATS

ARAGON

Translation: The one who believed in heaven the one who did not believe in it both loved the beautiful prisoner of the soldiers. 

Inscription on wall, in French:

- ET LE CHOIX

QUE CHACUN FAIT

DE SA VIE ET DE

LUI – MEME ETAIT

AUTHENTIQUE

PUISOU’IL SE

FAISAIT – EN

PRESENCE DE LA

- MORT –

SARTRE

Translation: And the choices that each one made of their life and themselves was authentic since it was done in the presence of death - Sartre

Inscription on wall, in French:

JE N’EST PAS

DE COMMUNE

MESURE ENTRE

LE COMBAT

LIBRE ET

L’ECRASEMENT

DANS LE NUIT

 ST EXUPERY

Translation: I have no common measure between free combat and destruction in the night

Inscription on wall, in French: 

JE SUIS NE POUR TE CONNAITRE

POUR TE CHANTER LIBERTE

PAUL ELUARD

MAIS LE JOUR OÙ LES PEUPLES

AURONT COMPRIS QUE VOUS ÉTIEZ,

ILS MORDRONT LA TERRE DE CHAGRIN

ET DE REMORDS. ILS L'ARROSERONT

DE LEURS LARMES ET ILS VOUS

 ÉLÈVERONT DES TEMPLES. 

VERCORS.

Translation: I was born to know you and to sing to you. / Paul Eluard / But the day when people have understood who you were, they will bite the earth with sorrow and remorse; they will water it with their tears, and they will raise temples for you. / Vercors

Inscription on wall, in French:

J’AI REVE TELLEMENT FORT

DE TOI – J’AI TELLEMENT

MARCHE TELLEMENT PARLE

TELLEMENT AIME TON OMBRE

OU’IL NE ME RESTE PLUS

RIEN DE TOI – IL ME RESTE

D’ETRE L’OMBRE ENTRE LES

OMBRES L’OMBRE QUI VIENDRA

ET REVIENDRA DANS TA VIE

ENSOLEILLE.  R. DESNOS

Translation: I dreamed so strongly of you, I walked so much, spoken so much, loved your shadow so much, where I have nothing left of you. I have left to be the shadow among the shadows, the shadow that will come and come again back into your sunny life.

Inscription on wall, in French:

CAR LES COEURS QUI

HAISSAIENT LA GUERRE

BATTAIENT POUR LA

LIBERTE AU RYTHME

MEME DES SAISONS ET

DES MAREES DU JOUR

ET DE LA NUIT

R. DESNOS

Translation: For hearts that hate war beat for freedom to the very rhythm of the seasons and the tides of day and night.

Commissioned by

Réseau du Souvenir and presented to the Government of France

Maintained by Bureau des monuments historiques et des lieux de mémoire (at Ministry of Defense)