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French senators at the Auschwitz Memorial
On May 25, the President of the French Senate Gérard Larcher, together with a group of several dozen members of the French upper house of parliament visited the Auschwitz Museum and Memorial.
‘About 75,000 Jews were deported from France for extermination by the Germans. A vast majority of them, approx. 69,000 were deported to Auschwitz. After the selection, 60% of them were immediately sent to the gas chambers,’ recalled Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz Museum.
‘The memory of those events is still very much present in France, as can be seen, for example, by the fact that last year the site of the former camp was visited by over 54,000 people from France,’ Director Cywiński added.
The guests visited, among others, block 4 dedicated to the extermination of Jews in Auschwitz, block 5, where part of the personal items stolen from the victims are kept, the French exhibition in block 20, as well as the crematorium and gas chamber.
The French senators laid wreaths in front of the Death Wall, where executions by shooting took place, paying tribute to the victims of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp.
In the second part of the visit, the guests visited the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp. They walked along the unloading ramp, on which the Germans carried out the selections of Jews deported to the camp for extermination. They also saw the ruins of the crematoria and gas chambers. The visit ended at the monument commemorating the victims of the camp.
