I had this post in my drafts folder for a while. It was empty. I was going to write about Pere Lachaise in one of my travel posts, but I think I will use it for a different purpose.
Pere Lachaise is self-described as the world’s most-visited cemetery attracts more than 1.5 annual visitors. Many are here to pay their respects to celebrities as varied as writers Oscar Wilde and Marcel Proust, musician Jim Morrison of The Doors, composer Chopin, actor Sarah Bernhardt, and singer Edith Piaf. (Pick up a cemetery map at the conservation office.) If you’re not the starstruck type, you can still appreciate the views of Paris, the Haussmannian chambers, and haunting statues and mausoleums.

I had the chance to visit Pere Lachaise when I went to Paris in 2006. Clients always had a puzzled look on their faces when we would discuss what to see and do while in Paris and I always recommended going to this cemetery. We don’t have anything like it in Canada. There are tombs and family plots that date back to the 1400’s. It is a very large place and easy to get lost for hours walking around (which we did).

While looking at the map and walking around I noticed that there was a Holocaust Memorial section of the cemetery. When I walked over to that section, I was quite surprised by it. The monuments and words of course were in French, which you could translate loosely, but the sculptures left a long lasting affect on me, and not in a good way. I didn’t take a photo because it was disturbing – it was a memorial for Auschwitz and it was a skeleton pushing a wheelbarrow with a skeleton in it.

My first thought was why? I really didn’t know that much about the France and the treatment of the Jews until a couple of years later. What I have learned since has been eye opening. In light of the recent events, even more so.

I began to read the book Sarah’s Key. It is a novel, but it is based on true event that happened in Paris in 1942. It was called the Vel D’hiv Round Up. Over the course of a week over 13,000 Jews (about 4000 children) were round up and put in the Veledrome D’Hiver. The atrocities that happened there, I don’t need to discuss, for obvious reasons. By the end of September 1942 almost 38,000 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz from France. In 1945 only some 780 of them remained alive.

I could not put the book down. I started it on a Wednesday night, and started again on Thursday after work. Finished reading it about 1am and went to bed. Woke up at 7am and started to read on line about the Vel D’hiv and the horrible treatment of Jews in France during the second world war.

And over the past few years (and weeks) the treatment of Jews is France is frightening and alarming. Where are we? Are we back in 1942 or are we over 70 years past that time? Lines are blurred and getting crossed every day.

Which leads me to the conversation I had with my mother last Friday night dinner. I know a lot of people that have parents or grandparents or other family members that are survivors of the Holocaust. Thankfully our family (both my mom and my dad’s) were here in Canada and didn’t really have the memories (or tragedies) in their life. Both of them are baby boomers (born in 1945) so they were young after the war and these were things that weren’t taught in school at that time.

My friend Adrienne and her mother are embarking on a journey this weekend. Her mother, Miriam Ziegler is a survivor of Auschwitz. She is going back for the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the camp. Can you believe that it is 70 years since it was all over in Auschwitz, yet, if you look at what is happening in France and other parts of Europe, you would think we were back there again. Being round up, and killed.

Yet, Miriam is alive. She went on to have children and grandchildren. She is the legacy of our people. Really, for everyone of the six million Jews that died in the Holocaust, there are generations that died along with them.

It is Shabbat. So hopefully as you sit down with your family tonight, you will light your candles, and pray not just for your family, but for all Jewish people, who are here with us or here in spirit.

Shabbat Shalom. Amen.