Posted on 01/24/2005 4:50:41 AM PST by Cornpone
A stone wall engraved with the names of 76,000 Jews who were deported from France to Nazi death camps during World War II has been unveiled in Paris. The "Wall of Names" memorial is located at the entrance to the French capital's newly renovated Holocaust museum.
Some 11,000 of those deported from 1942 to 1944 were children. Nearly all were killed - mostly at Auschwitz in Poland.
French President Jacques Chirac will officially open the site on Tuesday, before flying to Auschwitz.
Mr Chirac will be one of many world leaders present at ceremonies to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp.
'Prayer to the dead'
More than 2,000 Holocaust survivors and relatives of victims attended the inauguration ceremony in Paris' central Marais district.
They also took part in reading out a prayer to the dead.
The new site is an expansion of two institutions - the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr and the Centre for Contemporary Jewish Documentation.
"[The Memorial] will help in teaching a story that continues to haunt our everyday life," said its president Eric de Rothschild.
It took two years for several researchers to compile the list, drawing on Nazi secret police records and also Jewish archives.
"This wall keeps our innermost secrets in its stone and delivers them to those who pass," said France's former Health Minister Simone Veil, herself an Auschwitz survivor.
When the memorial officially opens on Tuesday, visitors will also be able to visit the basement crypt where ashes of some of the death camps' victims are kept.
Thanks. I must say, though, that I share the anger of many Americans with the circus that was French diplomacy during the Iraqi crisis. I'd be happy to see Dominique de Villepin rolled into tar and feathers and booted out of the country.
Our new FM said he hoped we had "finally got over the anti-American madness that afflicted the French diplomacy since 2003", and by Jove I sure hope he's right. We owe it to our dead soldiers who shared the same fate fighting the same enemy.
Many of us have relatives who died during World War II trying to save these people from the mess they got themselves into. There seems to be little acknowlegement, much less appreciation, for what they did.
Mess they got themselves into? fighting a war with a huge aggressor while the USA supplied Germany with industrial assistance? until Pearl Harbor changed things? what a thing to say ......
Also for the record the French returned some 450 pilots back to the UK during the Battle of Britain. Without those pilots the UK would have fallen to the Germans. many US pilots and seamen where included in those rescued.
This happened to me too.
When Clintoon was in office.
The woman who followed us up the street was in Sarlat, the Dordogne region. Somewhere else in the Dordogne, we were looking at a magazine prominently displayed at a news stand. It looked just like our TIME magazine, with a very sinister looking Bush on the cover under the headline: "Is this man dangereux?". (The obvious answer was YES!) We were chuckling at it when a total stranger came up and started arguing with us that the headline WAS TRUE! She was waving her hands and shouting...we just walked away.
Another was a woman on a train near Limoges. I also recall a woman in a restaurant in the Loire...maybe Saumur. She and her husband were at an adjoining table. She asked if we were American and then brought up President Bush.
We didn't support him, did we? Well, yes, we told her. She went on shaking her head and asking didn't we see how stupid and unsophisitcated he is? His poor understanding of the world is dangerous...well, you know the rest.
Now that I think about it, it's interesting that they were all women...I can't remember that a man ever brought up politics. Anyway, we had never encountered anything like it. Determined not to let it spoil our fun, we just brushed it off. I'll add that we are not "touristy" Americans. We both speak (poor) French and we never ask for ketchup with our frites. :)
hmmmm
I remember that "is this man dangerous" cover from the Nouvel Observateur ! How bizarre to think people would get so worked up (is that the correct US expression ?) by it !
Well, this kind of reaction really is a new one to me, I don't think even Reagan provoked such reactions. Wow. I hoped it didn't cast too much a shadow over your vacation - people should be intelligent (and good-mannered) enough to know that you're trying to enjoy some holidays here, and not working to ensure the nation's demise or something like that.
Oh, you feel *we* got you into the WWII mess? Interesting.
For the record, tens of thousands of Americans died trying to extricate the French from the mess they were in. And you feel *we* were responsible?
Not surprising it's the French point of view.
It didn't spoil our trip one bit. It was annoying at first, but we decided to ignore it. I seem to recall telling that woman in Saumur that, no, I didn't think Bush was a warmonger...I thought he was sexy! That pretty much shut down the conversation...LOL!
I think you rather dishonestly twisted my words there LJ :-(
No one in the US would deny that you arrived a little late in the war, and only when you where also attacked by an enemy you later agreed had to be stopped at any cost. The French where surrounded on 2 fronts by a superior equipped and numbered army. If you think you got France into that mess as you describe it that is your opinion. no one else in France believes that rubbish for a minute. The US continued to supply Germany with industrial goods and exports until the US entered the war. This is a fact you seem to be blurring over with your media stereotypical slurs at France. The only beneficiary as I have said of this attitude is the terrorist who is laughing very hard at your inability to track him down in Europe and your self destructive attitudes to potential allies in the war on terrorism in Europe.
Oh so now the French are responsible for Germany Nazi atrocities?
"And neither does America for all it's done for Europe."
This was reciprocal the British and French colonial armies attacked Japanese positions in Indonesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and the rest of the South Pacific and Asian Pacific rim. Just because two countries now have a difference of opinion concerning foreign policy does not mean two countries have forgotten the past. You must stop being such a slave to the media and start to think for yourself, the left wing media in the USA are laughing all the way to the bank. Stop accepting spoon fed stereotypes and open your eyes. the USA is vulnerable form attack based, financed and supported form Europe, we can watch your backs for you, but don't let some media hacks muddy the waters.
As for France despising Jews, I think all countries have their equivalents of the Klu Klux Klan and other far right white supremacists movements, do you imply the USA is free of such scum? of course not
No mention of the Roma Genocide as usual. Europe has a selective memory sometimes.
http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/romgypsies.htm
Ehm, excuse me, but are you saying that the Germans and French of today are the same like their ancestors? I mean, are you responsible for bad treatment of slaves? Surely not.
So, unlike the French and Germans regarding the Nazi crimes, you are partly responsible for OP Iraqi Freedom, so live with it. I dunno why you care anyway what the peaceniks say.
Good to read some reasonable comments, thanks.
I was about to ping you, but you´re already here! :-)
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