There is a speculative fiction novel by China Miéville called The City and the City. Its basic premise is that two cities coexist in time and space, yet each chooses to be invisible to the other. I haven’t read it (John has) but I like the title and the metaphor: the reminder that the spaces we inhabit hold multiple stories, layers which coexist, and that what we see involves choice. For example, when I wrote about the procession fluviale in my last blog I was also aware of a darker story of priests and Paris. On 2 September 1792 just a short way from the Ile de la Cite, at the Carms, a Carmelite monastery in the Latin Quarter which had been converted into a prison, 150 priests were killed for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the new republican constitution. The Revolution was radically anti-Christian, but the September Massacres mark a turning point in the Revolution. The Terror was not far away. The Seine, during the Terror and in much of France’s history, was a dumping place for bodies. The procession fluviale is a minor miracle. France still does not greatly love its priests.
The city and the city. Many of the historical layers are bookmarked with plaques. And many of these are within living reach. In late August bunches of flowers began to appear next to the memorial plaques to the patriots who were killed in the Battle for Paris in 1944: “. . . fell here for the liberation of Paris.” One is in our street. On 26th August 1944, less than twenty four hours after the German surrender, General de Gaulle walked from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame, and all the bells of Paris rang. On its anniversary the vieux, the older citizens of Paris, gathered at the town hall to remember and honour the dead.
The city and the city. The Marais, where we are living, has had a Jewish quarter since the 13th century. Last weekend was the Jewish New Year, Roch Hachana. On Sunday morning, as the first act of this new year the Mémorial de la Shoah, next door to us, held a ceremony to remember the victims of the Holocaust who have no graves. More than 76,000 Jews were deported from France to the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 2500 survived. There were around 300,000 citizens of Jewish descent in France on the eve of World War II, less than 1% of the population. Around a third had been French for many generations, a second wave of immigrants escaping anti-Semitism in Russia, Poland and central Europe began in the 19th century. In the Shoah museum you can see the cards, boxes and boxes of them, carefully filed, containing the details of French families of Jewish descent: the bureaucracy that supported the hunt, capture, deportation and ultimately the elimination of citizens. A history which involved the Vichy government in a way that even post-war France had difficulty acknowledging.
Opposite the Mémorial de la Shoah is a school, the Lycée Couperin (yes after the composer, who, of course, played the organ at St Gervais a few metres away). On the wall there is a plaque:
What remains scandalous is the failure of so much of the Church to stand against Nazism. It is a huge relief, therefore, to find on the opposite wall, the Mur des Justes, a smattering of priests among the roll of “the Righteous (les justes) among the Nations”, the honour roll of those who helped save Jewish people during World War II. Since this roll was begun in 1963 the names of 2693 people who helped French Jews have been included: their stories, of everyday risks and quiet heroism, are a note of hope in a dark chapter of human history.
The lane between the Mémorial de la Shoah and the Lycée Couperin has been renamed the Allée des Justes and I walk up here whenever I go to pray with the monks and nuns of St Gervais. As I struggled through the French renditions of the Psalms this week two lines of Psalm 1 leapt off the page:
http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/
The city and the city. Many of the historical layers are bookmarked with plaques. And many of these are within living reach. In late August bunches of flowers began to appear next to the memorial plaques to the patriots who were killed in the Battle for Paris in 1944: “. . . fell here for the liberation of Paris.” One is in our street. On 26th August 1944, less than twenty four hours after the German surrender, General de Gaulle walked from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame, and all the bells of Paris rang. On its anniversary the vieux, the older citizens of Paris, gathered at the town hall to remember and honour the dead.
The city and the city. The Marais, where we are living, has had a Jewish quarter since the 13th century. Last weekend was the Jewish New Year, Roch Hachana. On Sunday morning, as the first act of this new year the Mémorial de la Shoah, next door to us, held a ceremony to remember the victims of the Holocaust who have no graves. More than 76,000 Jews were deported from France to the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 2500 survived. There were around 300,000 citizens of Jewish descent in France on the eve of World War II, less than 1% of the population. Around a third had been French for many generations, a second wave of immigrants escaping anti-Semitism in Russia, Poland and central Europe began in the 19th century. In the Shoah museum you can see the cards, boxes and boxes of them, carefully filed, containing the details of French families of Jewish descent: the bureaucracy that supported the hunt, capture, deportation and ultimately the elimination of citizens. A history which involved the Vichy government in a way that even post-war France had difficulty acknowledging.
Opposite the Mémorial de la Shoah is a school, the Lycée Couperin (yes after the composer, who, of course, played the organ at St Gervais a few metres away). On the wall there is a plaque:
Arrested by the Police of the Vichy government, complicit with the occupation, more than 11000 children were deported from France between 1942 and 1944 and asassinated at Auschwitz because they had been born Jewish.There are similar plaques outside many schools in Paris.
More than 500 of these children lived in the 4th Arrondissement.
Among them pupils of this school.
Ne les oublions jamais. Never forget them.
What remains scandalous is the failure of so much of the Church to stand against Nazism. It is a huge relief, therefore, to find on the opposite wall, the Mur des Justes, a smattering of priests among the roll of “the Righteous (les justes) among the Nations”, the honour roll of those who helped save Jewish people during World War II. Since this roll was begun in 1963 the names of 2693 people who helped French Jews have been included: their stories, of everyday risks and quiet heroism, are a note of hope in a dark chapter of human history.
The lane between the Mémorial de la Shoah and the Lycée Couperin has been renamed the Allée des Justes and I walk up here whenever I go to pray with the monks and nuns of St Gervais. As I struggled through the French renditions of the Psalms this week two lines of Psalm 1 leapt off the page:
Le Seigneur connaît le chemin des justes,Where would we have stood? One fears one’s own lack of courage. What do we choose to see, what do we choose not to see? The city or the city?
mais le chemin des méchants se perdra.
The Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/
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