Wanloria › Destinations › Paris › Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation

Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation

An underground memorial at the eastern tip of the Île de la Cité, at 7 quai de l'Archevêché, behind Notre-Dame. It pays tribute to some 200,000 people deported from Vichy France to the Nazi camps. It was designed by the architect Georges-Henri Pingusson, took nine years to build and was inaugurated by Charles de Gaulle on 12 April 1962. The architecture seeks to evoke confinement, oppression and the impossibility of escape: you descend into a narrow, claustrophobic crypt, lined with glass crystals representing each deportee, with the tomb of an unknown deportee from the Natzweiler-Struthof camp and urns with ashes from concentration camps at the ends. On the walls are texts by writers such as Robert Desnos, who was himself deported, Louis Aragon and Jean-Paul Sartre. The exit opens onto an intense light that symbolises hope.

Things to do at Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation: 3 missions

• Read the texts by Desnos, Aragon and SartreWalk along the walls and read the quotations from writers such as Robert Desnos, Louis Aragon and Jean-Paul Sartre.
• Find the tomb of the unknown deporteeGo down into the crypt and find the tomb of a deportee from Natzweiler-Struthof, among the crystals that represent each victim.
• Walk to the tip of the Île de la CitéGo round the apse of Notre-Dame to quai de l'Archevêché and stop at the end of the island, where the memorial stands.

Near Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation

Source: Web oficial - Chemins de mémoire (Ministerio de Defensa)