des Martyrs

Because I'd not mentioned this visit, just posted a couple of photos. The memorial, dedicated in 1962, was open yesterday. The afternoon was another in the series of beautiful l'été de St. Martin (Indian summer) days we've been having, and people were out in large numbers making the most of it. All the benches in the little triangle at the tip of the Île de la Cité were occupied. That wasn't where I was headed, but past them to where an attendant stood keeping the way barred, letting in only two or three people at a time.

When my turn came--I knew, essentially, what was coming, what I was entering, having read about it, yet curse myself as maudlin though I may, as I descended the long, steep stairway, tears came to my eyes. I admit to remembering quite well the film The Sorrow and the Pity (all Woody Allen references to it aside), but one needs only to be aware of what happened in France during the Holocaust.

Everything about the memorial is austere, claustrophobic. You can read about its details, the unidentified victim buried there, the bits of earth and ash from each of the camps. The long chamber behind bars, with 200,000 bits of quartz lighted from behind, for the approximately 200,000 Jews deported from France, is devastating, as is the sad, barred view of the river outside. The face of no one I saw re-emerging at the top of the stairs was unmoved.