Maison D’Izieu Memorial

OCTOBER 24th 2017

The first stopover of our trip in France, Izieu. It’s a French town of 206 residents situated just before the Alps in the region of Auvergne Rhône-Alpes.

It’s sadly remembered for the tragic episode of the “children of Izieu”. The spouses Sabine and Miron Zlatin established a colony in 1943 where orphans and Jewish children fleeing from Nazis deportation were hosted, hoping to lead a normal life. On April 6th1944, the Gestapo of Lyon commanded by Klaus Barbie stormed in at breakfast time. As it was Easter morning, they were sure not to find any christian children. They carried out a round up which led to the deportation of 44 children and 5 teachers towards Drancy.

42 children were killed in Auschwitz. Miron Zlatin and other two kids were executed by a German firing squad in August 1944 in Estonia. Sabine Zlatin, who wasn’t in Izieu during the round up, escaped the slaughter. That gave her the opportunity to testify at the trial against Klaus Barbie in 1987 in Lyon. Klaus Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment and died while serving his sentence.

The presidential decree of February 3rd 1993 offered homage to the “victims of racial and anti-semitic persecutions and crimes against humanity committed with the complicity of the French State”.The following year, a memorial stone was erected outside the Maison. Every July a commemoration ceremony is held here, on the National Day in memory of the victims of racial and anti-semitic persecutions in which the French State was involved.