If You Haven't Yet, Visit This Memorial In Paris Next Time

 "Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commanding General of the Allied Forces

After our cold, but very pleasant stop for ice cream, we crossed back over the pedestrian bridge to the Ile de la Cite, and headed the short distance to the Deportation Memorial.

Dedicated to the 200,000 French victims of the Nazi concentration camps, this is a quiet, small, yet meaningful memorial to the horrors of the Holocaust.

The memorial is underground. You descend steps and are left alone a view of the sky and a little glimpse of the river. The rest of Paris is no longer in sight.

You look around and see a small opening in the back center of the courtyard. It's a tight, single-file entrance into the chamber. The plaque on the floor reads "They went to the end of the earth and did not return."

The hallway ahead (can not enter it) is lined with 200,000 lighted small crystals, representing each French citizen who died. There is an eternal flame of hope. There is a tomb of the unknown deportee. The side rooms are filled with triangles, recalling the identification patches inmates were required to wear.

The hallway of 200,000

lighted crystals.

There are several lists of

the concentration camps

Stairs take visitors up to Rooms 1 and 2, where there are emotionally difficult to read exhibits and signs about life (and death) in the concentration camps. (The signs are in French and English). It is a stark reminder of the evil of Nazism, and the horrors of Hitler trying to kill all the Jews.

I had never heard of it before planning for this trip, despite it opening in 1962 under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle, exactly six months the date of my birth.

It serves as a crypt, "hollowed out of the sacred isle, the cradle of our nation, which incarnates the soul of France -- a place where its spirit dwells" as in the brochure produced by the French survivors' group described the memorial.

By the way, I'm going to believe Dwight D. Eisenhower a helluva lot more than I'm going to believe Holocaust deniers like Kanye West, David Duke, and Nick Fuentes.

Am Yisrael Chai, no ifs, ands, or buts.