At the east end of Il de Notre Dame in the center of Paris is
a memorial to the 200,000 people deported from France to death camps by the
Nazis during World War II. A park covers
most of the east end of the island. At the very east end it narrows to a point.
The memorial is below the surface of the island pointing in the direction of
the deportation: east to Auschwitz and other death factories.
Visitors walk down stairs to an open space with sheer walls,
then enter chambers with memorials to the dead. The chamber that points east is
long and opens to the Seine through a Barred window. I took a boat ride later
in the day and looked in from the outside instead of out from the inside.
Either way telescopes the view and focused my mind on the point of the
memorial: that two hundred thousand people were ripped from the the land the loved
by a racist pig Hitler.
We should never tolerate a racist in a position of power in
our country.
