Memorial to the Deportation Dijon

The Monument to the Deportees is a tribute to all the victims.

In front of the memorial lies a plaque with the text:
“Under this plaque lies an urn containing ashes and earth collected from all of Hitler’s concentration camps.
These granite blocks were brought from Struthof and carved by the deportees themselves, at the cost of great suffering.”

The information board reads:
“Tribute to the deportees.
In memory of the inhabitants of Côte-d'Or who were deported by the occupying forces between 1940 and 1944 with the complicity of the Vichy regime.
To all victims of the Nazi concentration camp system, arrested and subsequently held under inhumane conditions.
Many of them were imprisoned in the Dijon detention center before being transferred to the camps.”

Following the deportation of these hundreds of men, women, and children, Maurice Voutey wrote in his book "Prisoner of the Improbable or the Extravagance of Dreams":
“Can we sleep without the ghost of the past emerging from an obscure memory? At night, there are dreams in which the camps I want to forget triumph.

This plaque was created in collaboration with a group of high school students from Carbot High School in Dijon.

Maurice Voutey (1925-2012) was a key figure in the Resistance.
During the occupation, he was part of the United Front of Patriotic Youth, where he was responsible for Côte-d'Or, and of the National Front for the Independence of France. He was arrested on May 22, 1944, and interned in Dijon and Compiègne, before being deported to Dachau and then to the camps along the Neckar River. After his return from deportation, he taught history and geography and published several historical and biographical studies.

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Source

• Text: Traces of War
• Photos: Wim Wouters