The Faces of Deported Children in the French Holocaust Museum
Along with the literally scores of positive memories that I will treasure from our 10 day trip to France, there is one image that will haunt me for all my days
. It comes from the Shoah ( Holocaust) Museum in Paris and it was inspired by a small room, with chairs in the middle, that contains 4,000 photographs, mounted floor to ceiling, of Jewish children deported from France to death camps during World War 2. For twenty minutes, Liz and I started at the faces. Some were baby pictures, some school pictures, some candid shots of teenagers enjoying one another or photos of children at play. That these innocent youngsters saw their promising lives erased because of hatred so great that it saw them as a danger reminds us how destructive, irrational and truly evil racism is.
This is not just history and it is not just France. The devaluation of children's lives, as my friend Stacy Patton has written eloquently, has been an integral part of how African Americans have been treated in the US, and it has resurfaced in the deportation and detention policies of this Administration.
Deportations and Detention camps for children, are sad to say, integral parts of our current political reality in the USA.
After viewing the pictures of deported and dead children in the Paris Shoah Museum, I will resist those policies with every ounce of energy at my disposal