Mémorial de la Shoah

www.memorialdelashoah.org

17, Rue Geoffroy l'asnier
75004 Paris
01 42 77 44 72

Walking towards the river from the Marais you may encounter a peculiar alley with an exceptional echo.  On Allée des Justes in the 4th, outside the Mémorial de la Shoah there lies a "passage amplifié", lined with speakers and microphones hidden in the building across from the Memorial.  Capturing the sounds of the ambient city around it, these sounds are then distorted and played back through the speakers in a ghostly echo, bouncing back and forth off the walls of the passage.  At around 3pm when the neighboring lycée lets out, the sound is not quite deafening, but certainly disorienting. 

The installation was created by artists Miriam Bäckström and Carsten Höller, and is dedicated to the memory of the more than 11,000 Jewish children deported from France during the war.  The Mémorial de la Shoah next to it is free to visit.

--Natalie Hegert

(*Image: Deportation Memorial, CC photo by Just a Slice.)