Obj. ID: 52091
Modern Jewish Art Child Victims of the Holocaust Monument in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France, 2017
To the main object: Jewish tombstones at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France
Memorial Name
Jewish Children’s Memorial Monument
Who is Commemorated?
Jewish children deported from France between 1942 and 1944
Description
The monument is in section 97 of the cemetery in an area of other collective monuments. It consists of a large concrete platform set into a low grassy hill. The cemetery wall is immediately to the left. A monument to the victims of Auschwitz III (Buna-Monowitz) is to the right.
Metal rods are set into the concrete, and these are twisted to create the silhouettes of seventeen children. Taller children are in the back and smaller ones are up front. The figures are just outlines and are transparent, so the effect is of a group of ghosts. On the edge of the platform, bronze letters are affixed with a short dedicatory inscription. Six-pointed stars are set at each end of the inscription, near the corners of the platform.
Inscription
On the Base (French)
1942 A La mémoire des enfants juifs assassinés par les Nazis 1945
Passant ta mémoire est leu seule sépulture
Translation: In memory of the Jewish children murdered by the Nazis / Your passing on their memory is their only burial
Commissioned by
Conseil national pour la mémoire des enfants juifs déportés (COMEJD) [National Council for the Memory of Deported Jewish Children] and the City of Paris
6 image(s)
sub-set tree:
Stainless Steel
Bronze
In September 2001 the Council of Paris decided to pay special tribute to the 11,400 Jewish children in Parisian schools who were deported to their deaths. By 2017, after extensive research, 6,890 children were remembered by name on 391 commemorative separate plaques placed on 384 schools throughout Paris. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo promised when previously unveiling a plaque at the same site, that a central monument would be created in memory of all the 11,450 children deported from France, including 6,100 from Paris alone.
There was a call for projects, and a jury chaired by Ivan Levaï selected Casto Solano's design which was praised for its originality and the emotions it evokes. On October 14, 2017, Mayor Hidalgo inaugurated a monument. In her remarks, she referred specifically to the September 2017 attack on a Jewish family in the neighboring town of Seine-Saint-Denis, and the murder of Sarah Halimi in April 2017, at her home in the 20th arrondissement, as evidence that antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence has not ended.
'Monument aux enfants juifs assassinés par les nazis," Cimetière du Père Lachaise, Amis et Passionnés du Père Lachaise (APPL), https://www.appl-lachaise.net/monument-aux-enfants-juifs-assassines-par-les-nazis/ (accessed February 21, 2024)
Bassit, Rina, “Holocaust Memorial for Children Dedicated in Paris,” Jerusalem Post, October 14, 2017, https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/holocaust-memorial-for-children-dedicated-in-paris-507413 (accessed August 26, 2022)
“Anne Hidalgo inaugure un monument à la mémoire des enfants juifs déportés,” Press release (Paris Press), https://presse.paris.fr/pages/13700 (accessed September 20, 2023)
“Le monument aux enfants parisiens victimes de la Shoah,” Amejd12.net, https://amejd12.net/2017/10/15/le-monument-aux-enfants-parisiens-victimes-de-la-shoah/ (accessed September 20, 2023)