Tea & croissant: In honor of the innocent

The Shoah Memorial was one of those places that I was looking forward to during my Paris trip. Partly because it was free. Partly because it would be quite educational.

Whenever someone gives me the lame excuse of "oh well everyone thinks it's so then it must be so", I usually reply them with just one line:

tell that to the Jews. 

Most of the time, they would understand and try to reason differently.  Truthfully, I am not very familiar with the plights of the Jews except for the fact that Nazi decided to just kill a bunch of them. Like quite a lot of them. One day, I'll learn more about them 🕮

A trip to this memorial would have shed some light on my uneducated mind but alas, that was not to be.

That place at that time turned out to be the mostly densely populated of the entire Paris during my entire trip. Everyone was just hanging out, jostling for some standing space to get the best view of the now-President. Their soldiers definitely look more intimidating than ours.

This is how crazy it went. We didn't know what everyone was doing there and decided to just join them. It didn't take (too) long before he finally arrived. Even then, the man of the hour arrived last. Sensing that there was no way we would be able to get in here, we gave up and took a walk to our next stop: Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation.

It looked quite nicely framed: a beautiful female citizen walking away from few soldiers, in the middle of them. She even gave me a smile. I think they are just used to Asian tourists doing silly antics as this.

The Memorial of the Deportation looked like it was setup to welcome some VIP guests. Not wanting to miss our chance (again), we quickly made our way in. Also, it didn't help that it started to drizzle.

There is no mistaking the sombre atmosphere.

Coupled with the grey sky morning evening, the mood becomes heavy.

Panorama fail.

It is an underground crypt with simple lines, not much of feature but there in lies its beauty.

If you are claustrophobic, give this a pass. The good thing is there weren't many people here so it's still manageable.

Throughout the years, I've heard about the atrocities against the Jews but only in bits and pieces. Yes, Hitler orchestrated the Holocaust. But, how? And why?

My German is progressing in such a way that I am thinking of giving up.

Yet, (a big) part of me still wants to continue learning. After all, it's free and gives me an excuse for not joining people for lunch. Sorry, I need to do my lessons.

The many different camps one could have ended up in.

Not the kind of summer camp you would want to end up in.