The evolving memory of the Shoah

Most of the parcels, which arrive without return addresses or accompanying letters, contain yellowed and crumpled documents that have been hidden in attics for several decades. Sometimes, they are purchased from auctions on the web… Every year, close to one million documents on the fate of the Jews in World War 2 are collected by the Shoah Memorial, located in the Marais quarter of Paris.

Few of them have the historic scope and impact of a typed draft of the French Vichy government’s anti-Jewish law with handwritten annotations by Maréchal Pétain, which was recently made publicby the Memorial. The document, which was authenticated earlier this month, is proof that the leader of the French state under the Nazi occupation (July 1940 to August 1944) played a determining role in the creation of the legislation, and was clearly anti-Semitic — two facts which had long been disputed by many French historians. But even the more humble contributions to the collection bear witness to details in the stories of hundreds of thousands of families who are remembered by the Memorial.

Increasing privatisation of historically important pieces

The route followed by these documents and photos is often circuitous and shrouded in mystery. In many cases, one generation had to give way to the next before families could overcome the trauma and in some cases feelings of shame that prevented them from entrusting objects that detail their past to a public archive. “Today, we are at a juncture where this material is being passed on from one generation to the next,” explains Serge Klarsfeld, the vice-president of the Memorial, and a noted lawyer and Nazi hunter. “The surviving witnesses are reaching the end of their lives, and they are looking back on their past.” It is a key period, which has brought to light, many documents that are highly prized by the archivists. Over the years, Serge Klarsfeld has accumulated a huge number of publications and research materials, and a large number of the many cupboards in his apartment museum are devoted to thousands of photographs of deported children, which he has obsessively collected in many countries of the world.

Objects manufactured in the concentration camps, letters and pictures: the Memorial and its 80 members collect anything that might enable families to retrace lost relatives, or might be of benefit to history researchers — many of whom are now concerned about the increasing “privatisation” of historically important pieces, which do not find their way into national archives. For many years, book and antique dealers were an excellent source of material, as were the jumble sales where numerous treasures were found.

More and more pieces bought and sold on eBay

But researchers at the Memorial — which is one of the world’s largest Shoah documentation centres along with Israel’s Yad Vashem and the federal centre in Washington — also collect material via direct mail campaigns and advertisements in major international newspapers. On occasion, they even take to the streets to conduct door-to-door campaigns. “We did one recently in Drancy,” recounts Karen Taieb, who has managed the Memorial’s archives for 17 years. “When we looked at the map for Drancy area, we saw that there were a number of houses not far from the site of the camp. So we went looking for documents and oral accounts from witnesses.”

An increasing number of historically important pieces are also bought and sold on the Internet, especially on eBay. Stamp collectors who buy envelopes sell their contents on the site — there are also postcards and collections of letters with unique details of moments in the past. On this emerging market, the highest prices are paid for posters, which often fetch sums of several thousand euros. The Memorial, which has spent close to €200,000 on the purchase and restoration of documents, has a large number of these. And the endless quest for new material continues.

The list of victims of the Shoah on the commemorative wall at the entrance to the Memorial is constantly evolving with entries being corrected as well as added and removed. And it is in this myriad of changing detail that researchers are hoping to discover rare finds that will suddenly shed light on a wider picture. ”We still don’t understand why there is only one photograph of the Vél' d'Hiv mass arrest of French Jews, which took place on the 16 and 17 July, 1942. A total of 13,152 Jews — including 4,051 children — were were arrested and subsequently deported. Only 25 adults survived,” explains Memorial director Jacques Fredj. “There must be more pictures somewhere, and we are still looking for them.”

Translated from the French by Mark McGovern