Rainy Day in Paris

I woke up to a steady drizzle this morning and after waiting a couple of hours, I decided it wasn't going to improve.  Considering my "indoor" options, I rejected both the Louvre and the Quai d'Orsay, knowing that both would be overrun by tourists seeking shelter from the rain.  Then I remembered a previous encounter with a neighborhood museum that was closed when I first passed by...the Shoah Museum here in the Marais.   The Shoah Museum is dedicated to the memory of nearly 80,000 French citizens who were victims of the Holocaust...11,000 of them children under the age of 16.

I had noticed a lot of primary and elementary schools in the neighborhood with this plaque posted prominently at their front doors.

Loosely translated:

In memory of the students of this school who were deported between 1942 and 1944 because they had been born Jewish.  They were victims of Nazi barbarism with the active complicity of the Vichy government.  They were exterminated in the death camps.  Let us never forget them.

As you can see, people still leave flowers at these memorials, and I find them heartbreaking.

So I went to the Shoah (Catastrophe or Holocaust) Museum that tells the story of what happened in France during this ghastly time in history.  Upon entering you see literally wall upon wall of tiny print that lists the nearly 80,000 victims by name (below).  I noted a few Schweitzers among the victims (no doubt the original spelling of my maiden name).  I'm unaware of any Jewish ancestors, but must admit I've done very little in the way of genealogy.  Places like this make me want to learn more.

Within the museum itself, there was the expected chronological detailing of how events unfolded and the particular context in which it occurred here in France.  The story includes the complicity of the Vichy government, and the failure (or refusal) of the rest of the world to intervene.  One room is completely devoted to pictures of some of the 11,000 children who fell victim to this brutality, and I was brought to tears reading their heart-breaking letters to their parents (who were almost certainly already dead.)

I have visited the death camps at Dachau and Mauthausen...and have visited various Holocaust Museums including Yad Vashem in Israel.  They are all very moving experiences, but I can never quite assimilate how human beings can be so ruthless and cruel to one another.  And when innocent children are the victims, I am rendered speechless by the depths of human depravity.  

Upon leaving the museum, though, one is uplifted by the wall dedicated to the names of the "Righteous"...the non-Jews who risked their own lives to help their Jewish friends and neighbors....some of whom temporarily "adopted" Jewish children and provided them with fake documents attesting to the fact that they were not Jewish.  Hiding Jewish families in private homes, and providing transport to those trying to escape were crimes punishable by death, and there was no shortage of "examples" held up to the general public to discourage them from helping their Jewish friends and neighbors.  These were extraordinary times confronting very ordinary people, but many rose to the challenge and became true heroes.  Their names are inscribed on this wall for all to see... for all to honor....and for all to emulate if the occasion ever were to arise again.