After barely sleeping the night before our flight I stayed awake the entire flight watching movies. We landed at 7:05AM Paris time or 1:05AM Central PA time. Jonathan's suitcase was one of the last bags to come through the luggage carousel. We grabbed our rental car and pryed ourselves into the peppy little Opel with stick shift. Afteer figuring out how to get of the parking lot we drove to the hotel and dropped off our bags, grabbed a coffee and a cab.
The cab driver dropped us off at 4 Rue Goncourt in the 11 Arrondissement, the apartment building that my grandparents shared in Paris. After taking some pictures of the front of the building we followed the steps that my grandfather and grandmother took on the way to the address where my grandfather had to report so that he could have his "situation evaluated". We walked for quite a while on Boulevard Voltaire until we reached the destination, the Japy Gymnasium at 2 Rue Japy. We wondered how long the new prisoners had to wait for all of their loved ones to return with their provisions.
We next went to the Gare d' Austerlitz train station where the prisoners were put on trains to be sent to their assigned internment camp.
After a visit to Norte Dame we stepped around to the back of this incredible structure and visited the Memorial des Martyrs de la Deportation which tells the haunting story of the deportation of the Jews from France to the infamous death camps.
Following a quick lunch We headed over to our next stop, the Memorial de la Shoah. It is very surreal to see a member of your family's name on a Memorial of such a horrific event in history. Jonathan and I went to the research department where they were able to provide us with some documents that we have never seen surrounding my grandfather's arrest by the French police and an information card from the camp in Pithiviers. I showed one of the woman working in the department the information that I had and she asked if we could share items as they do not have any copies of the documents and pictures tha I have.
To finish off the day we walked down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. It is now 8:10PM and I am falling asleep.
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