“On a pile of human ashes, a doll sits”: in Nîmes, the poignant tribute of Paul-Langevin’s children at the ceremony to remember the deportation

Paul-Langevin's CE2 read the poem “A doll in Auschwitz”. FREE MIDI – ADRIEN BOUDET

Gérard Kupfer, Jean-Paul Boré, Guy Laïck et Georges Muller. Midi Libre – AD. B.

Some of the personalities present at the commemoration. Free Midday – AD. b.

The ceremony took place this Sunday morning as part of the national day.

"On a pile of human ashes, a doll sits. It is the only remainder, the only trace of life. All alone she sits, orphaned by the child who loved her with all his soul."

Across the wet Avenue Jean-Jaurès, the words of Mosche Schulstein resonate. This Holocaust survivor wrote the poem The Auschwitz Doll while he was deported to the same extermination camp. 80 years later, it was Nîmes children from the Paul-Langevin school who took it back.

A poignant moment, as an introduction to the ceremony marking the National Day of Remembrance of the Victims and Heroes of Deportation. At the microphone, Jean-Paul Boré, president of the Friends of the Foundation for Memory and Deportation of Gard, read the national message from federations and associations contributing to the duty of memory. "Let us unite in the same tribute all those human beings whose lives were crushed because of their resistance, their belief, their origin or their sexual orientation in the name of a racist, expansionist and dominating regime."

Then, joined by Guy Laïck, president of the Jewish Cultural Association of Nîmes and Gard and Georges Muller, delegate of the Homosexual Deportation Memorial, he posed the first wreath at the foot of the Martyrs of the Resistance monument, followed by elected officials and representatives of the State.

At least 1,124 Gardois were deported, according to AFMD censuses. More than half died. Among them, 65 children.