The management of the Izieu Memorial Museum got the idea for this initiative by receiving a donation from the family of Marie-Antoinette Cojean.
Under the occupation, and with the sub-prefect of Belley, Pierre-Marcel Wiltzer, of whom she was the secretary, she had helped to find a refuge for Jewish children hunted down by the Nazis and their accomplices.
Without however being able to prevent the round-up of forty-four of them, nor that of seven educators, on April 6, 1944, by order of the head of the Gestapo, Klaus Barbie.
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After the war, the young woman had attended the first commemoration of the roundup, April 7, 1946. She had taken photos since remained in her family.
In this batch of images, memorial officials noticed the presence of a camera in the crowd.
This made it possible to recover from Gaumont a report that had been dormant for 75 years in the archives of the former film news company.
Presented at the exhibition, this 34-second commented film shows the faces of the three thousand people present around the Communist Minister for War Victims, Laurent Casanova, attending the inauguration of the commemorative plaques for the house and the monument located in below the hamlet, in Brégnier-Cordon.
On the strength of these findings, the memorial appealed for witnesses and more photos poured in.
A former head of the Eclaireurs de France brought an album from the scout association present on this day and witnesses, aged less than ten years at the time, shared their memories.
Finally, a forgotten and yellowed box, that of the official preparation file for the ceremony, was miraculously found in the basements of the sub-prefecture of Belley a few weeks ago.
Read also: Indignation after the desecration of a stele in memory of the children of Izieu
"I have known them all"
“The importance of this first ceremony of April 7, 1946 had been a little underestimated. Public mobilization was very strong, very early on, ”
emphasizes Dominique Vidaud, director of the memorial museum, also recalling the impact of the Barbie trial on the memory of the children of Izieu.
“For memory to be preserved, traces must absolutely be left.
Then, it takes time for it to be built, ”
confirms historian Annette Wieviorka, a specialist in the Shoah.
To read also: Annette Wieviorka: "The memory of the Shoah is fragile"
At the age of seven, Samuel Pintel arrived in Izieu in the small cart pulled by the bicycle of Miron Zlatin, husband of the director of the colony Sabine Zlatin, after a forty-kilometer journey in the cold from Chambéry.
He stayed there for a few weeks before moving to another refuge three months before the roundup.
But it was not until the Barbie trial in 1987 that Samuel Pintel realized that he had moved to Izieu, recognizing the house in television reports.
“Before that, Izieu for me was nothingness, a black hole.
I had no idea where the village was located.
I had not even remembered the name ”
, confides the man who, since, established the complete list of his murdered comrades.
“I was the last to leave the house. I have known them all. I couldn't let them down, ”
says Samuel Pintel, who has conducted his own research.
Her son Simon helped Sabine Zlatin - who died in 1996 - in her efforts for the house to become the memorial museum, inaugurated in 1994 by François Mitterrand.
Tuesday, the commemoration ceremony and the inauguration of this outdoor exhibition will be without an audience, due to health restrictions.