Post

I went to the Holocaust memorial and was struck by the engaging and logical pattern of the museum. To begin with, I was overly excited because they had a small exhbit on the book The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn which is my favorite book ever. It is what I would like to call a murder mystery as the author travels worldwide to unravel the destinies of his family who perished during the war. It was so interesting to be able to read pages of the book in French and see new photographs of those he met and wrote about. Although the museum was small I thought it did a good job of displaying information. Jewish life was shown on video monitors that were screens on poles directed from the ground, so you were literally looking down at the films-a new way of watching tv. Also, throughout the exhibit they had small glass stands that told the story of one individual's life during the war with artifacts that belonged to them. After seeing a complete overview of WWII you were able to identify with one face from the crowd. Survivors told their stories on a film in French in a dark room and I found it enthralling to decipher stories similar to ones I had heard before but recounted in French. It still seems strange to me that all these people were living in Paris along the lines of how people live now yet their world drastically changed in the blink of an eye. I saw that they frequented place I do now yet were to disappear forever. It was also very interesting to see an old film of bustling activity on rue de rosiers in the heart of Le Marais. It looks exactly the same now excpet for the clothing of the people who stroll it. They also had photo albums each labeled with a different aspect of life in France. I took out one with marriages and was at once struck not only by the differences in photos concerning dress between one and the other-something I would be interested in as I look at wedding images today- but the dates of which the bride and groom dies some were months later. IT was another thing that brought me closer to the history the stories the lives. When you left they had small room plastered with the faces of french Jewish children who died during the war which reminded of a similar visual imagery at the Holocaust Museum in DC, both striking. Although I am not related to any French Jews who died during the war, having resided in Paris for 4 months truly makes me think about the fact that they lied here too happily, successfully, peacefully and it seems strange still of their final end.