Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation

Inaugurated on 12 April 1962 by General de Gaulle, then President of the Republic of France, the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation is a memorial to the 200,000 people deported from Vichy France and evokes certain characteristics of the concentration camps: imprisonment, oppression and impossible escape, the long process of attrition, the desire for extermination and abasement.

Designed by the architect Georges-Henri Pingusson, the vast, hexagonal, dimly-lit crypt opens onto the gallery covered by luminous rods representing the deported people killed in the camps and the ashes of an unknown deportee from Natzweiler-Struthof camp.

Either side of the crypt, two small galleries contain earth from the different camps and ashes brought back from the cremation ovens, enshrined in triangular urns.

All around, the names of the camps and excerpts from poems by Robert Desnos, Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Jean-Paul Sartre and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are inscribed in red characters.

Every year, on the last Sunday of April, the Memorial is visited in honour of the National Day of Remembrance of the Victims and Heroes of the Deportation.

Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation
Square de l'Ile de France 75004 Paris
Tel - Fax: +33 (0)1 46 33 87 56

Opening times:

Open every day except Monday
1 October to 31 March: 10 am to 5 pm
1 April to 30 September: 10 am to 7 pm

Tours

Grounds and crypt: Free admission every day (see opening times above)
Upper rooms: on request from the Director of Important Memorial Sites in Ile-de-France.

Admission: Free

Duration of visit: 30 minutes (full tour): grounds, crypt and upper rooms)

Getting to the memorial
By metro: Line 1 - Saint Paul station or line 10 - Maubert Mutualité station
By road: Quai de la Râpée - Pont d'Austerlitz- turn right onto Quai Saint Bernard – continue along Quai de la Tournelle – turn right onto Pont de l'Archevêché-continue along Quai de l'Archevêché

Site officiel de la fondation pour la mémoire de la Shoah

Fondation pour la mémoire de la déportation