'Rails of memory' Holocaust memorial opens in French city of Lyon

"In Memory of the six million Jewish victims of the holocaust, which includes 1,5 million children, 1941-1945, 6100 came from our region" which adorns the "Rails de la memoire" (train tracks of memory) monument, in Lyon, France, inaugurated on 26 January 2025.

A Holocaust memorial was inaugurated in Lyon on Sunday, marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Over 6,000 Jews from the French city were killed between 1941-1945.

The work, entitled "Train Tracks of Memory" (Rails de la mémoire), is made up of 1,173 metres of railway tracks, symbolising the 1,173 kilometres separating Lyon from the former Auschwitz concentration camp, in Poland, where a million Jews were murdered between 1941 and 1945.

Auschwitz was the largest of the extermination camps and has become a symbol of Nazi Germany's genocide of six million European Jews, along with more than 100,000 non-Jews.

The camp was liberated on 27 January by Soviet troops who found 7,000 survivors. The date has been designated by the United Nations as Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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Around 76,000 French Jews, including more than 11,000 children, were deported by the Nazis with the help of the collaborationist Vichy government.

The new Holocaust memorial in Lyon – designed by Parisian architects Quentin Blaising and Alicia Borchardt – stands in a square near the central station, from which many convoys left towards the death camps.

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Inscribed on the edge of the rails are the words : "In Memory of the six million Jewish victims of the holocaust, which includes 1,5 million children, 1941-1945. 6,100 came from our region."

(with AFP)


Read more on RFI English

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