Day 4: Père Lachaise, The Panthéon, and the Professor – Wednesday 9 March 2016

Aubrey Reeher

The fourth day of our excursion dawned gloomy and rainy, creating an atmosphere that was fitting for our first destination of the day, the cemetery of Père Lachaise. The cemetery was originally intended to be located outside of the city of Paris itself, but with the expansion of the city over the course of time, it now sits comfortably within the city limits, a grand monument for Parisian memory in the midst of bustling everyday life. The cemetery is filled with some celebrities, including French painter Eugene Delacriox, American author Gertrude Stein, Irish author Oscar Wilde, French singer Edith Piaf, and the family crypt of Baron Haussmann, the man who redesigned Paris in the 19th century.

An overview of the sprawling Père Lachaise cemetery

An overview of the sprawling Père Lachaise cemetery

Aside from the cemetery’s obvious purpose of being a final resting place for departed loved ones, the cemetery also acts as a monument for those who have no burial place. In the far corner of the cemetery, near one of the walls that separates the living from the dead, was the real purpose of our visit to Père Lachaise. Monument after monument in this corner of the cemetery honors not the famous individuals who made Paris their home that tourists often flock to, but the numerous “ordinary”  individuals who were deported from France during the Second World War to concentration camps in other parts of Europe.  Perhaps it was fitting that the rain had been falling steadily throughout much of our trek through the cemetery so that by the time we reached these somber memorials we were chilled to the core from the rain that had seeped its way into our coats and shoes, thus accurately reflecting the change in tone as we shifted from seemingly everyday tourists walking through the cemetery, spotting the eternal resting places of famous people, to witnesses and memory workers.

A plaque on the cemetery wall honors the children deported from France, one of many such plaques we saw throughout the city.

A plaque on the cemetery wall honors the children deported from France, one of many such plaques we saw throughout the city.

The differences between the rest of the cemetery and the part that honors the victims of the Shoah was marked. On a basic level, the grave markers in the rest of the cemetery and the monuments to the victims of the Shoah were noticeably different. For one, each traditional mausoleum or headstone was inscribed with the name of the individual or family buried there. The victims of the Shoah were represented not typically by individual name, but by the name of the concentration camp (or camps) in which they lived and died, and in some cases, survived. As we had seen at the Memorial de la Shoah a few days before, the deportees are honored individually by name on several walls, but not at the cemetery on those monuments erected in their memory.

 

Monument for the memory of those interned at Monowitz, also known as Auschwitz III.

Monument for the memory of those interned at Monowitz, also known as Auschwitz III.

Another key difference between the rest of the cemetery and the Shoah monuments are the nature of the statues. One the traditional cemetery side, there are religious icons such as angels or crosses, or other representations of the individual’s life and accomplishments. These adornments comfort the cemetery visitors  as they look at them, exuding the feeling that these people are peacefully at rest now.  A literal example of this feeling, the grave marker for Colette, the famous 19th and 20th century French author, looked like a welcoming bed, inviting notions of peace and tranquility. The statues of the concentration camp memorials, however, depicted anything but peace. While each individual camp had its own monument, the one thing that several of them had in common were the skeletal figures featured prominently. With these monuments, there will be no denying what the deportees went through to survive in the camps, if they were even given that chance to live. There is no comforting the cemetery visitor, for that is not their intended purpose. Their primary purpose seemed to be that of witnessing, commissioned by the ones that came back for the ones who never would, and not for the benefit  of comforting the visitors of Père Lachaise. In fact, these monuments did the opposite. The gaunt, emaciated figures leapt out at us as we passed. The footsteps of the nameless and faceless deportees beckon us to follow them through the gates to Bergen-Belsen camp. There were rows and rows of these monuments, all representing the different camps or Resistance movements. Here the Resistance and the Jewish deportees are memorialised side by side. In this cemetery, acting as a great leveler of humanity, competing memories seem to fade as the harsh reality of their often shared fates become crystal clear.

French author Colette's bed-like grave marker.

French author Colette’s bed-like grave marker.

The monument to the internees of Buchenwald-Dora. According to our guide, the three statues are symbolic of the dead, the weak, and the strong workers who will ultimately survive.

The monument to the internees of Buchenwald-Dora. According to our guide, the three statues are symbolic of the dead, the weak, and the strong workers who will ultimately survive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After our rainy exploration of Père Lachaise, we headed to the Panthéon, which was unfortunately closed due to unforeseen events, despite the wonderful sunshine. Originally intended to be a church dedicated to St. Genevieve, during the French Revolution the Panthéon became a shrine to national heroes, the crypt where France honors the crowning jewels of its society. Among the scientists, artists, and politicians buried or honored here are four members of the French Resistance, two women and two men who fought against the Occupation of the Nazis. French President Francois Hollande nominated these four individuals to be buried here, representing four ideals the Resistance stood for: liberty, equality, fraternity, and the Republic. These four national heroes are not the only ones of their kind buried or commemorated in the  Panthéon. They are in the company of Jean Moulin, the head of the Resistance in Lyon who was captured, interrogated, and killed by Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and those distinguished with the honor of Righteous Among the Nations. Although we didn’t get to go inside, I think it would have been interesting to compare the representation of the Resistance in the Panthéon with their monument at Mont-Valérien, which we had visited the previous day.

The Panthéon

The Panthéon

Rounding out our day was lunch in a bistro near the Jardin du Luxembourg with Pierre Birnbaum, a historian and professor who is an expert on the history of  Jews in France. Born during the war to immigrants to France who settled in the 1930s, he had unique insights for our group. His historical expertise was invaluable in helping to contextualise the Shoah for the group, establishing differences between “types” of Jews and positing explanations for why certain Jews were able to protect themselves while others were not. He also helped to put into perspective why France was unique in the fact that ¾ of Jews in France survived the war, especially compared with places like Poland. After a morning filled with memories of death and destruction in the cemetery, Birnbaum’s focus on the background of Jews in France and the advantages for a select group of Jews to avoid deportation was a new and refreshing insight.

Overall, despite the rainy start to our day, our group learned a lot about history, memory, and monuments from two very interesting experts, Pierre Birnbaum and our tour guide for the morning’s tour of Père Lachaise and the Panthéon, Flora Goldenberg, before wandering off and exploring more of Paris, giving our minds time to reflect on what we had learned that day and rejuvenating us for the next day’s main activity, visiting the concentration camp outside of Paris, Drancy.

 

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