Travel | Paris | Holocaust

Finding Sorrow and Solace in Le Marais

A somber visit to Mémorial de la Shoah

Visitors to Mémorial de la Shoah are greeted by a copper cylinder imprinted with the names of the death camps where over 76,000 French Jews were sent following roundups by Nazis, as well as complicit French Vichy officials and gendarmes during World War II. (Photo: ©Craig K. Collins)

On a quiet street near a quiet corner not too far from the Seine in Paris burns an eternal flame.

It burns for the solace that those who were lost will not be forgotten.

It burns for those who until recently refused to remember.

And it burns for Jacqueline Jedynak, 11, who remains frozen in time, forever wedded to a summer day in 1942 when she was snatched from her home by a gendarme and sent to her death at Auschwitz along with her father Jacob, mother Merla, sister Paulette, and some 22,000 other Parisians, most of whom were women and children. All that remains of Jaqueline is her pretty purple dress on display, stitched with a yellow Star of David that looks almost purposely, fashionably color-coordinated.

The dress of 11-year-old Holocaust vicitm Jacqueline Jedynak makes for a poignant display at the Mémorial de la Shoah. (Photo: ©Craig K. Collins)

I happened upon the Mémorial de la Shoah a decade ago and quite by accident during a run down a side street through the now-fashionable Le Marais neighborhood.

I at first thought it was some sort of military or political facility. Its imposing…