A Holocaust memorial was inaugurated in Lyon to ensure that the atrocities and the memory of the six million Jewish victims are never forgotten.
Titled ‘Rails of Memory,’ the installation features 1,173 meters of railway tracks—symbolizing the 1,173 kilometers between Lyon and the former Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, where one million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
Designed by Parisian architects Quentin Blaising and Alicia Borchardt, the memorial is situated in a square near Perrache station, a site from which many trains departed during World War II to reach the death camps.
“This space could be nowhere else but here,” stated Jean-Olivier Viout, president of the organization behind the memorial, addressing the hundreds gathered for the ceremony.
The installation not only commemorates the “6,100 men, women, and children from our region” who were exterminated solely for being Jewish, but also honors the six million victims of the Holocaust. Viout emphasized that this figure “must be hammered home and constantly reiterated,” recalling his role as a prosecutor in the 1987 trial of Klaus Barbie, the Lyon Gestapo chief.
Lyon’s mayor, Grégory Doucet, highlighted the importance of remembrance, stating, “Anti-Semitism is a pernicious poison that must be vigorously fought.”