French Prime Minister Jean Casteux called for “everywhere and always to fight against the unfulfilled temptations of barbarism” during a ceremony at the Izzeu Memorial Museum in Ain on Friday.
Castex visited the last refuge of 44 Jewish children and six of their teachers, rounded up by order of the Gestapo on April 6, 1944, at the behest of Claus Barbie. They were all deported and murdered in Nazi extermination camps.
“The throat tightens, the voice breaks, Just the thought that these kids are torn from their parents, hunted and chased, these kids being thrown into trucks, the power to sing to the end And may courage be found, his love for France,” Castex said, alluding to the song “You Won’t Have Alsace and Lorraine” that the children sang in trucks after the roundup.
The Prime Minister paid tribute to the local population, recalling the aid given to refugee children, and underscored the generous role played by the then Deputy Prefect, Pierre-Marcel Wiltzer.
“Between the villages of Iziu and Bregnier-Cordon, everyone knows [of the refugee] Colony, everyone knows and everyone is silent.”
Castex lay in several rooms of the monument, in front of a picture left by class children, led by teacher Gabriele Perrier.
French Prime Minister Jean Casteux (R) visits a renovated classroom at the Maison d’Azieu memorial for extirpated Jewish children, next to its director Dominique Vidaud (C) on July 16, 2021, in Izieu. (Philippe Desmez/AFP)
Castex pays tribute to “Jacques Chirac’s splendid speech”, delivered in 1995 during the memory of Well D HIV Roundup On July 16, 1942. The former head of state recognized “the responsibility of our country in the exile of the Jews”.
In early 1946, a first ceremony was held in Ijiu, as recalled by an exhibition at the Memorial Museum.
“Here every child has a place and a name that will not perish. They are alive, in a monument to the French Republic,” said Thierry Philippe, president of the Eisue Monument.
Inaugurated in 1994, the monument receives 30,000 visitors annually, including 15,000 school children.