Also, 428 French soldiers and one Soviet soldier who lost their lives in the Second World War are buried here. The site lies next to a German cemetery containing the bodies of 2,332 soldiers, 911 of whom are buried in a collective grave.

A commemorative monument in the form of an obelisk stands in the French section, bearing the inscription Dulce Et Decorum Est, Pro Patria Mori (It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country).

At the beginning of 1916, there were riots in towns in the north caused by shortages in supplies. In April, the German authorities responded by sending workers to neighbouring areas. Faced with international criticism, this deportation was soon stopped. Some of the workers, including Arthur Jaspart, lost their lives. He was a worker from Valenciennes who died, aged 21, on 9 July 1918 in the isolation ward at the German military railways workshop in Guise. He is buried in Guise cemetery (Grave No.1236).

The French soldiers include Henri Gaudier aka Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (grave 936), a painter and sculptor, precursor in France of the British artistic movement vorticism. A sergeant in the 129th infantry regiment, he died on 5th June 1915 at the age of 23 in Neuville-Saint-Vaast.

The remains from World War II include those of Paul Nizan (grave 8189) and Jeanne Bartet (grave 8352). The latter, an army nurse who belonged to the Union des Femmes de France de Bordeaux, was killed on 21st May 1940 near ambulance number 257 (Labroye). Paul Nizan, novelist, essayist, journalist and translator, was killed on 23rd May 1940 in Oudricq during the German attack on Dunkirk.

A monument has been erected to the memory of the soldiers of the 15th army corps who fell in August 1914.

Nearby are the Cabaret Rouge British cemetery and also the biggest German cemetery in Europe, Maison Blanche, which contains more than 44,000 graves. To the north of La Targette, towards Souchez, are two monuments, one placed at the entrance to the Czechoslovakian cemetery, honouring the memory of Polish and Czechoslovakian Foreign Legion volunteers.

Covering an area of 25 hectares, the cemetery holds over 40,000 bodies, half of which are in individual graves, and the other half are divided into seven ossuaries. It is France’s largest national cemetery.

Some foreign soldiers (Belgian, Romanian and Russian) are also buried there. French soldiers killed in WWII were also buried there.

Amongst the graves, you can find the grave of a father and his son who died on the battlefield in 1915 and 1918. Six other graves hold the bodies of a father killed in WWI and a son killed in WWII.

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Among these soldiers are buried the remains of two generals. Those of General Dame, commander of the 2nd North African Infantry Division (DINA) who died for France on 18th July 1940 during his captivity in the fortress of Königstein and those of General Mesny, commander of the 5th DINA. This general officer was executed on 19th January 1945 in retaliation for the death of the German General von Brodowsky on 28th October 1944.

178 graves also preserve the memory of Soviet prisoners of war or civilians arrested on the Eastern Front and deported to France to work in the mines or in the construction of the Atlantic Wall. Some antifascist Russian immigrants are also buried there.

The war cemetery also contains 21 graves of Russian soldiers who died during the First World War.

In 1915, the German army established, to the left of the communal cemetery, a military cemetery for burying the soldiers who died in combat or in the field hospitals. It contains 1,627 bodies, including 631 in a mass grave.

The Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp was mainly used for the internment of resistance fighters from across Europe, but homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses were also interned here. The camp’s interns were made to do gruelling forced labour for the economy of the Third Reich. A number of those deported for racial reasons (Jews and Gypsies) were also sent here, to be subjected to horrific pseudo-scientific experiments.

Today, this listed historic site offers the chance to discover the workings of the only concentration camp in France, with its huts, crematorium and gas chamber.

Opened in 2005, the Centre Européen du Résistant Déporté has a definite educational approach to its visits. Touchscreen terminals, films, objects and photos chart the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe and the setting up of the Nazi concentration camp network, whi

le at the same time paying tribute to the resistance movements that rose up against oppression.

A meeting place and discussion forum, the Centre holds regular temporary exhibitions and conferences. It aspires to spread the values of freedom, respect, tolerance and vigilance.
The camp, a major site for national and European remembrance, comes under the responsibility of the National Office for Veterans and Victims of War, an executive agency of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces.

Sources: ©Site de l’ancien camp de concentration de Natzweiler-Struthof - Centre européen du résistant déporté

Fondé en 1988 à l’initiative d’anciens résistants et passé sous gestion du Département du Loiret en 2008, le Musée se compose de deux bâtiments de plain–pied, pleinement accessibles à tous les publics. Le premier se consacre aux espaces d’exposition permanente, tandis que le second accueille conférences, expositions temporaires et ateliers pédagogiques. Une salle de consultation des archives et de la bibliothèque du Musée est également accessible sur demande. Attenant au Musée, un paisible jardin propose au visiteur un espace mémoriel en hommage aux résistants–déportés du Loiret.

Now the property of the Communication and Audiovisual Production Company for the Department of Defence (E.C.P.A.D), the fort at Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne), constructed between 1841 and 1845, was modified after the war of 1870 in order to defend Paris. It is part of the first line in Séré de Rivières' system.

Constructed between 1841 and 1845, the fort was equipped in 1870 with 94 artillery pieces and commanded by Sea Captain Krantz. It was defended by a marine battalion that had come from Brest. On the 29th and 30th November, the fort supported the attacks from the outposts of the 6th Prussian corps to the north of Choisy-le-Roi, Thiais and Chevilly-la-Rue. On the 30th these three villages received 5,500 shells in a single day. The besieging troops owe their salvation to the numerous trenches. The French abandoned the captured positions on the evening of the 30th. The fort was occupied by the 6th Prussian corps from the 29th January until the 20th March 1871. A battery of 21 cm mortars was brought into the gorge to fire on the central section and batteries of 15 cm cannons to bombard Paris in the event that fighting should start again. The townspeople occupied the fort after the departure of the Prussians, with Colonel Rogowski in command of the confederate garrison. Faced with the threat of an attack by troops from the 3rd Versailles corps, the Confederates evacuated the fort during the night of the 24th to 25th May, blowing up a munitions depot and destroying nine of the casemates between the 3rd and 4th sides.
The fort is a pentagon with 5 bastions. It is built on underground galleries; only one of the bastions is not entrenched in the foundation piers. The galleries (more than 2 km) were planned out between 1852 and 1860 to keep watch over these piers and serve as shelters from bombardments (the ceilings of these galleries are 6 m thick). During the works, 2 battalions from the 65th Line Regiment were used, housed in an army camp close to the fort. The dominant position of the fort is clearly visible from the crossroads to the north of the entrance. The entrance accommodates two guardhouses in five vaulted casemates. There are also three postern gates, of which 2 are next to the latrines, along the other sides. The ramparts and bastions are bridged by about fifty cross sections, including 28 with vaulted shelters. The rampart between bastions 3 and 4 protects 18 casemates; one of them had a bread oven. The flanks adjacent to the bastions have gun casements for the infantry. The four other ramparts have a scarp with protected walkway for the infantry. The parade ground is surrounded by a large barracks for the troops and two houses for officers. These buildings were rebuilt in 1872. The 2 gunpowder magazines have an internal surface area of 142 m2. The fort is served by 3 wells. The building is faced in millstone, with cut stone for the stays and window and door surrounds. The buildings have tiled or zinc roofs. The arches of the casemates and magazines are in stone. The ditches between bastions 1, 2, 3 and 4 are still preserved. To the west, a police barracks occupies the place of the ditches. On the glacis there are now gardens, a college, a school, some houses and other buildings. Access is still via a casemate guardhouse. The rampart has kept its cross sections and casemates, although the latter have been converted into offices. The three barracks rebuilt after 1872 have been redeveloped, along with the two gunpowder magazines dating from 1847.
The premises now house the Communication and Audiovisual Production Company for the Department of Defence (E.C.P.A.D). They store the audio-visual archives of the military history of France from 1900 to the modern day, through 16,800 films and videos and more than 3.5 million de photographs. The first world war collection collates all the pictures and films made by the Armed Forces Photographic and Cinematographic Division (SPCA) from 1915, the date it was established, to 1919 when it was suspended. This collection is made up of images directly linked to: fighting and its aftermath: the French front and the Eastern front, the lives of poilus (a slang term fro a French soldier), the army medical corps, prisoners and what remains of the battlefields; images of the economic effort of the country and its colonies; images of political and diplomatic life: official visits of heads of state or foreign delegations, the Treaty of Versailles etc. pictures and works of art, monuments and museums and photographs taken in anticipation of reconstruction. The second world war collection collates all the documents issued by the various forces represented: the phony war documents the life of the French armies in the countryside, from the North Sea to the Italian border, between the declaration of war and the start of the French campaign; Vichy is concerned with the actions of the government and the Armistice Army, mainly in the free zone in North Africa before the allied landings; The Liberating Army follows the main fighting that took place from North Africa to Europe, from Algiers in November 1942 until the liberation of the concentration camps in 1945.
The German collection is especially large, due to the great number of operational theatres illustrated along the eastern front and through the diversity in the subjects covered in the military field (scenes of fighting and training, the lives of units on the front, the repression of people in the east and the manufacture of weapons) and in everyday life. Managed by the Armed Forces Cinematographic Division (SCA) which was united after the war, the Indochina war collection groups together Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Cambodia and Laos. Although military documentaries, most of which were about the land army, represent the main subject of this collection, there are also documents describing the way of life, habitat and special customs of the various ethnic groups. Many documents belonging to this collection illustrate French action in the colonies: keeping order, industrial and agricultural development, the construction of schools, housing and clinics and the establishment of administrative frameworks. They demonstrate approval of French presence in Indochina and Algeria. The external operations collection. Protecting France's fundamental interests can lead to the intervention of the armed forces outside their national territory. That is why we talk about external operations, carried out within the framework of international mandates, such as NATO and the UN. The main external operations covered by the ECPAD since 1945 are the Korean war (1952-1953), the Lebanon (1978-1984), Chad (1978-1987), Cambodia (1991-1993), the Gulf War (1991), Bosnia-Herzegovina (since 1992), Rwanda (1994), Kosovo and Macedonia (since 1998), the Ivory Coast and Afghanistan (since 2001).
Fort at Ivry-sur-Seine 2-8 route du Fort 94205 Ivry-sur-Seine Remembrance tourist information Mairie d'Ivry Esplanade Georges Marrane 94205 Ivry-sur-Seine cedex Tel.: 0149.60.25.08 Communication and Audiovisual Production Company for the Department of Defence (ECPAD) Tel: 01.49.60.52.00 Fax: 01.49.60.52.06 e-mail: ecpad@ecpad.fr or mediatheque@ecpad.fr

Cité de la Muette was a collective housing unit built in the 1930s but was never completed. In 1941 it became an internment camp and then, in 1942 a camp to group together Jews of France before deporting them to the extermination camps. Between March 1942 and August 1944, around 63,000 of the 76,000 Jews deported from France passed through Drancy. Cité de la Muette was inhabited again as of 1948 and has gradually become a memorial for Drancy: commemorative plaques, erection of a memorial monument, buildings listed as historical monuments since 2001. 

A place of history and education open to everybody, the Drancy Shoah Memorial covers an area of 2,500 m² on five levels. It has a permanent exhibition on the camp's history, several educational rooms, a documentation centre and a conference room. With its large windows facing Cité de la Muette, the dialogue between the two is constant. Just after entering, visitors can see on the wall the faces of 12,000 Jews who were interned at Drancy between 1941 and 1944.

The permanent exhibition uses video testimonials, archive documents and photographs from the period to tell the history of the Drancy camp and the daily life of those interned here from 1941 to 1944, the organisation of the deportations from 1942, and the construction of the camp's memory after the war. Ten documentaries by Patrick Rotman are broadcast. In the middle of the exhibition, the House of Children, designed by Delphine Gleize, allows visitors to learn the fate of children who were interned and deported.

A number of educational activities are possible. For school children there are educational workshops, memory trails, general and themed visits and dedicated areas. In the documentation centre, scanned publications, photographs, films and archives on the history of Drancy can be viewed. School children and the general public can carry out research on the camp and on the people to whom this site is dedicated. A number of testimonials will be collected from the population of Drancy in connection with local associations to improve the collections.

The Drancy Shoah Memorial is complementary to the Paris Shoah Memorial. It is a place of mediation between the site of the former camp and the public, a place of history and transmission. It will allow school children and the general public to be better informed of the history of Cité de la Muette and particularly the central role of the Drancy camp in excluding French Jews in the Second World War and in the implementation of the "Final solution" by the Nazis in France, with collaboration from the Vichy government.

Drancy Shoah Memorial - 110-112, avenue Jean-Jaurès - 93700 Drancy
Tel.: +33 (0)1 77 48 78 20 – Email: contact@memorialdelashoah.org

www.memorialdelashoah.org

Article by the Memorial on the inauguration
 

Reception for groups and school parties:
Tel.: +33 (0)1 53 01 18 01 – Email: education@memorialdelashoah.org

Getting there:

Public transport - RER B to "Le Bourget"
then bus 143 to "Square de la Libération".
Bus 143 and 703, stop at "Square de la Libération"
Bus 151, 251, 684 and 551, stop at "Place du 19 mars 1962"

By car - Market car park.

Autolib terminal: 105, avenue Jean-Jaurès

Paris-Drancy shuttle:
Every Sunday until 31 March 2013 (inclusive).
2pm: leave from Mémorial de la Shoah (17 rue Geoffroy-l’Asnier, 75004 Paris)
arrive at Mémorial de Drancy at 2.45/3pm
5pm: bus returns to Mémorial de Paris