Shoah

This afternoon was an amazing experience. We went to the Shoah Memorial. The word 'holocaust' is an anglo-saxon term. The French use the Hebrew word 'shoah' which means disaster, to describe what happened to millions of Jewish people during World War II. The Shoah Memorial is in the Jewish area, very near us. The first thing you see when you arrive is the Wall of the Righteous - a list of hundreds of names of non-Jewish people who helped and protected French Jewish people during the war. Across the road, on a school, is a small plaque which says that of the thousands of French people taken away to concentration camps, over 11000 were children, and 500 of those children were from the neighbourhood in which we stood. In all, about 76000 French jews were killed during the war, out of about 300000 living in France. Inside the memorial is the Wall of Names, including every French Jew who was killed.

It's an extraordinary memorial. We walked through photos, films, artifacts, newspaper articles and stories about what happened. There was so much information, a lot of it in English, that I'm sure you could spend hours there reading everything and looking at everything. It's a very powerful exhibition. At the start, I felt really sad. About halfway through, I felt really angry. By the end, I felt numb.

One of the things which really hit me was the actual front wall of one of the barracks from a French camp, with pictures of it in situ, being used. It was really there, in the building. Another thing which was very painful was near the exit, where you have to walk past walls full of pictures of happy babies and children, before they were taken away. In 1942 on the 14th August, convoy 19 from Paris included the first removal of children under 12. The French government cooperated fully with Hitler to round up and remove the jews. It wasn't until 1995 that Jacques Chirac publicly acknowledged the French Government's responsibility in the murdering of so many jewish people.

I'd always felt terribly sorry for the Jewish people sent to concentration camps, and when I think about 'jews' and 'WWII' I imagine emaciated, sick, abused people. But today, I saw images of hundreds of healthy, happy, well-dressed, ordinary people. I never stopped to think that before they went to concentration camps, their lives were much like mine. There were lots of cute studio photos taken of bouncing babies and proud parents, kids playing with water, families at the beach, little boys in school uniforms. There were even pictures of happy families wearing the yellow stars. Frankly, it was less tragic for me before I thought of this.

I started to wonder if I could pop back in time, and had the opportunity, would I shoot Hitler? I brought this up later with my family, and asked them if they thought it was wrong. Mostly, they did. I would have no moral problem with it. I hope I would have the courage. Easy to say, sixty years after the fact. I felt a bit angry that out of the long line of naked women, clutching small children, all waiting to be shot, that they didn’t just run out of the line and ram the SS soldiers. I like to think I would prefer to die that way, rather than compliantly wait my turn. Once again, easy to say.

I bought a few books in the bookshop, which I will wade through, in French, as well as a gorgeous picture book about a bear called Otto, who survived the war.
Afterwards, we made our way up rue des Rosiers, which has lots of jewish bakeries, patisseries and delicatessens. It was absolutely gorgeous. Just around the corner, a couple of dozen men and boys in kippahs were talking and laughing as they entered some building. We went to a falafel shop and had the closest things to doner kebabs since we left Australia. They were delicious! We also bought an assortment of patisseries which we took home and cut up and shared, so we all tasted about six. Great fun. David and Rachel are off to run around the Eiffel Tower.