Earl:
"...the symbolic tomb of the 200,000 French men and women who died in
the Nazi concentration camps during World War II - Resistance fighters,
Jews, forced labourers. Their moving memorial, Le Memorial de la
Deportation, is a kind of bunker-crypt, barely visible above ground, at the
extreme eastern tip of the island (Ile de la Cite). Stairs scarcely
shoulder-wide descend into a space like a prison yard. A single aperture
overlooks the brown waters of the Seine, barred by a grill whose spiky ends
evoke the torments of the torture chamber. Above, nothing is visible but the
sky and, dead centre, the spire of Notre Dame. Inside, the walls of the
tunnel-like crypt are studded with thousands of points of light representing
the dead. Floor and ceiling are black and it ends in a black raw hole, with
a single naked bulb hanging in the middle. Either side are empty barred
cells. 'They went to the other ends of the Earth and they have not returned.
200,000 French men and women swallowed up, exterminated, in the mists and
darkness of the Nazi camps'. Above the exit are the words 'Forgive. Do not
forget..."
From the Rough Guide to Paris, 1997 edition.
D.
Donald Neil MacDonald, BA DipLIS
www.skelpitheid.com
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