In Alsace, controversy around a "memorial monument"

In Strasbourg

In Alsace, memory is a subject that continues to be debated.

It took ten years to bring about the presentation of a “monument” in memory of the 54,000 Alsatian-Moselle dead and missing during the Second World War.

Always with this dilemma in the background: can we mix the names of the 40,000 forcibly incorporated, dead or missing in the Wehrmacht battles, with those of the other victims, deportees, resistance fighters, soldiers killed in 1940 in uniform? French, civilians dead in the bombings?

For the Israelite community, the issue is far from settled.

Supported by Philippe Richert, President of the Regional Council of Alsace, then of the Grand Est, the idea of ​​a “Wall of Names”, inspired by the Shoah Memorial in Paris, was intended to enable the families of the dead and missing , without known burial, to meditate.

A first scientific commission had validated, in 2017, a project for a stone wall erected in the climb to the Alsace-Moselle Memorial in Schirmeck.

Wanted in 2000 by Richert, the memorial tells in a didactic way the complicated history of Alsace-Moselle between 1871 and 1945, with a recent space dedicated to European construction.

In 2019, it received 48,000 visitors, including 18,000 college students.

A "mixture of victims"

Very quickly, the debate focused on the presentation of names in alphabetical order, which results in a "mixture of victims".

The former resistance fighters and families of deportees refused to allow

“their deaths to be associated with those of those who were forcibly recruited”

.

Aware of the difficulty, Jean Rottner, who succeeded Philippe Richert as president of the Grand Est Region, appointed a new scientific commission in 2018, chaired by historian Frédérique Neau-Dufour.

Its members only met twice, but abandoned the idea of ​​a “Wall of Names” in favor of a new project, soberly called “Memorial monument”.

Unveiled Monday, this 1.6 million euros building, which will be built below the Schirmeck Memorial and entrusted to the agency specializing in cultural engineering Syllab, provides, in 240 m2, a space of

"collective tribute"

and

“interactive terminals by distinct groups”

allowing access to detailed individual files.

"We want a place that does not oppose and denounces Nazism,"

explained Jean Rottner straight away, acknowledging that

"to get to the end of the story, we still need work

.

"

"The history of Alsace annexed by the Nazis is complex,"

recalled his predecessor, invited to his side.

Those forcibly incorporated were all declared dead for France

“Disappointed”

by the project, Gérard Michel, president of Orphelins de Pères Despite-Us, regrets

“the Wall of Names which would have made it possible, like the one erected at Ground Zero in New York, to take the measure of the drama of the incorporation of force which did not affect any other region of France ”

.

Those forcibly incorporated were all declared, after an investigation, dead for France.

According to the latest studies, the volunteers were 2000 and 3000.

But the strongest reluctance came from the Jewish community.

"Wanting to put all the dead at the same level is to help the demonization sought by the French far right"

, warned CRIF Alsace.

For the president of the Israelite consistory of Bas-Rhin, Maurice Dahan,

"we cannot put on the same level those who were assassinated because they were Jews and those who died because they were soldiers"

.

“Even though he has compassion for the families of the unburied dead

,” he added.

Suffice to say that the discussion on the architecture of the building has only just begun.