Memory sites

After a campaign by the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, the Drancy Shoah Memorial opened to the public on September 23, 2012. A historic place where memory is transmitted, this branch of the Paris Memorial presents the the former internment camp’s history.

The Camp des Milles, an important place of remembrance of the internment and deportation of France’s Jews, houses a museum created with support from the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah. The Camp des Milles Memorial Site was one of the key projects of Marseille Provence 2013: European Capital of Culture.

A place of history and remembrance open to all, the Maison d’Izieu Memorial perpetuates the memory of the Jewish children and adults who found refuge there from May 1943 until the raid on 6th April 1944.

In November 2012, the Resistance and Deportation History Centre Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation (CHRD) in Lyon reopened after a year-long renovation. The new permanent exhibition features the latest advances in historiography.

Installé dans l’ancienne prison de Nantua, ville médaillée de la Résistance, le musée retrace l’histoire de la Seconde Guerre mondiale au travers du vécu des habitants de l’Ain. Il questionne également la construction de la mémoire après 1945 et ses usages contemporains.

The Rivesaltes camp was successively internment, deportation and transit camp. 60,000 Spanish republicans, Jews, gypsies and harkis were "regrouped" there between 1939 and 1964, the date of its official closure. Today it is a high place of remembrance of internment in France.

During World War II the people of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the surrounding villages of the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon mounted one of the greatest rescue operations of the war. Drawing on their Huguenot traditions of hospitality and stubborn resistance, and at risk to their own lives, they sheltered literally thousands of refugees.