THE MEMORIAL TO THE MARTYRS OF THE DEPORTATION
Andrew Wallace Architect + Interior Designers from Liverpool, was at the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation on the Ile de la Cité in Paris was initiated by the Réseau du souvenir. Created in 1952 by the solicitor Paul Arrighi, member oh the Résistance and leader of the movement “Ceux de la Résistance”, a survivor of Mauthausen, and by Annette Lazard, widow of a deportee who died in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Réseau seeks to keep the memory of the deportation to the Nazi camps alive, to inspire the French nation to pay homage to the victims, and to encourage new generations to consider the lessons to be learned from it. Its members are former deportees and members of the Résistance, as well as families of the disappeared.
The movement was also the impetus behind France’s National Day of the Deportation and the inspiration for film “Night and Fog” by Alain Resnais. Manchester architects, Liverpool architects, Cheshire architects and elsewhere in the UK may be interested to go on this memorial which was initiated by the Réseau in 1953, and which was entrusted to the architect Georges-Henri Pingusson. First the city of Paris (1956) and then the Ministry of the Interior (1958) gave their consent to having it built on this symbolic site at the tip of the Ile de la Cité, behind Notre Dame.Work began in 1960 and a national subscription was launched to support its implementation. The monument was inaugurated by then President of the Republic, Charles de Gaulle, on 12 April 1962. This memorial offers a pathway designed to involve visitors, leading them to a meditative contemplation, through silence and solitude, and finally to a crypt where the remains of an unknown deportee are preserved.
Project in Liverpool :
