(0:00 – 2:04)
Hi, my name is Abby and I’ve been staying in Paris the last couple days and I’m going to tell you things that you need to see, hear, do, listen. Paris is a beautiful place. France is a beautiful country and while Paris is known for sites like the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, something that is really integral in Paris is the history of World War II and the experience of Jewish people during World War II specifically.
And something that I’ve loved while being here in Paris is the intertwined relationship of history and here and now place. I think France does an amazing job of putting monuments and memorials and information about the past in everyday spaces and in areas where someone from France would be on their way to work or someone visiting would be on their way to a well-known site. And so while there are lots of museums and memorials that you can specifically go to, there’s also a lot of informational graphics and posters as well as smaller plaques in and throughout the city that really really help tell the story of France’s past, specifically Paris’s past as well.
And one of my favorite sites that I’ve gotten to experience so far is the Jardin mémorial des enfants du Vel d’Hiv. This is a super super powerful memorial. It is hard because it’s about children and the lost lives of many children and that’s always hard to read about, see, interact with.
(2:05 – 6:06)
But I think the designers did an amazing job of creating a memorial that was very honorable and also in a really crucial location. It’s very close to a main train station to go to the Eiffel Tower and so it’s kind of on a path that many people would be on every day, which just means that there’s more people constantly seeing this memorial either because they interact with it one-on-one or they just catch glimpses or glances of it. But even those glimpses and glances help people to remember what happened.
And I think as human beings it’s important for us to try our best to remember the past of those before us. And something that was really interesting about this site that I personally loved is just the construction of this site rather than creating something that is fully man-made and manufactured for the canopy-like feel over top of some informational photos and graphics. There is simply a industrial rebar grid system, not fully a grid, but is kind of this system that is placed in this garden that then nature is allowed to kind of create its own life over top of.
And something that’s really interesting is the incorporation of thorns within the site. I’m unsure of whether this was intentional or not, but I think whether it has occurred on accident or was intentional, I think it’s very powerful. I think it is almost a visual explanation of just how difficult and hard of a topic children going through horrible events is.
And so I think this site is not only one that is interesting in its design and is also quite puzzling as well. If you have the awesome chance to get to go to this site in Pearspect and learn about what happened, you will see that the floor of the site, there’s just this like gravel pebbles everywhere. And then in certain spots, there’s these concrete slabs that are different colors and kind of like disorganized and slightly discombobulated.
And something that I wondered about was whether or not it is supposed to be some imagery to showing the brokenness of the state of Paris during this time, or if instead it was a matter of wayfinding or drawing people in. And I think something that this site does do is allow for a lot of individual interpretation, not being a clearly defined, and every aspect of the site being clearly defined lets people get to experience it and try to think more about why it may be the way it is. And I think in thinking about the design choices of the memorial, you also then lead into thinking more about what occurred, why there is a memorial for it, why it’s important to remember how you can best relay that information and those memories to others and work as a collective to carry on the stories of the past.
(6:08 – 8:11)
And something that I already mentioned that I really loved about this site is the incorporation of nature and that relationship between the natural and the manufactured. And this was also seen at a park earlier today close to a more touristy area of Paris. And in this park there is a small monument that is a wooden curb, or I would say that you could see in the United States, that is in a vertical position and then is incorporating this metal statue head with these figures that look like people almost melting off the shoulder as well.
And I think it’s quite a powerful monument. And I also think, once again, it’s interesting how it’s in a place that lots of people would come across it. There was lots of people in this park eating their lunch, meeting a friend, taking their kids to the playground.
And so once again, it’s somewhere where people will be constantly remembering what occurred. And once again, there’s that relationship between the natural and the manufactured. And I think it once again goes to how no matter how hard we try to forget the past, at the end of the day, it will always be a part of the nature of a country.
And when I say nature, I mean more like ephemeral nature, not physical. But in this sense, it is also being integrated into the physical nature, like just like a tree is planted and grows and is there and lives. Also, these stories in the past of these lives that were lost, are grown and live in these same places.
(8:12 – 11:15)
And so yeah, those are two memorials I would definitely recommend for a visitor and another site that would be amazing for you to go to, to truly learn and understand just how devastating this time was for the Jewish population in Paris is to also go to the Shua. That was a memorial that I found to be extremely, extremely powerful. It’s always hard going to powerful sites that just have so much detail and information about really, really awful things that occurred.
But it’s super important to know what happened and to know the past and to understand it and to relay it. And as generations pass that lived during the day of World War II, it’s important for us coming after to make sure we don’t forget and leave behind all of the people and the lives that were lost. And so some other notes that I have about Paris is that while it’s a super awesome place to see beautiful scenery, see beautiful things and also get to learn more about World War II, I think something else that every person that comes should do is to just interact with the people and the culture.
It’s a super amazing experience to just see what French life is like, to listen in on conversations that you may not even understand and also being able to realize that hard conversations or plaques about World War II that are discussing hard topics, even in French, you can sometimes almost decipher what is happening. There’s almost this emotional cloud around the memorial that even when you can’t fully understand what it’s saying by the design or the imagery, you can understand what the story behind the memorial or monument is, which also just goes to show that it doesn’t always have to be a learning history through a textbook and instead can be experienced and interacted with between the individual and the monument. So yeah, next time you come to Paris, definitely check out these sites and I will tune back in for future episodes on other World War II sites and memorials.
Have a great day!