Maison d’Izieu – Memorial to exterminated Jewish children

The life of the children of Izieu

Inaugurated in 1994, after the trial of Klaus Barbie, the Maison d’Izieu anchors in the collective memory the memory of the 44 children and 7 educators who were deported and murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Tallin in Estonia on the orders of the head of the Lyon Gestapo.

Today, the Maison is a place of memory, education and life, where you can still hear the games and laughter of the children who lived there before being swept away by the tragedy of deportation.

You’ll discover their portraits in the dormitories, drawings and letters in the refectory, moving testimonies to the life that went on despite war and separation, thanks to the courage and commitment of the adults around them.

A particularly moving place, full of memories. There are plenty of period documents to take us back to those dark days. It’s easy to imagine this house full of children before the tragedy. A place that invites us to reflect and reflect.

A place to live, learn and remember

Interactive content and guided tours guide you through the house and exhibition spaces. The Maison d’Izieu is a place that invites you, through the memory of children and anti-Semitic madness, to be vigilant in the fight against all forms of discrimination and intolerance.

The permanent exhibition is organized around three themes:

History: “Why Jewish children at Izieu?
International criminal justice: “From Nuremberg to The Hague: judging the criminals”.
Sharing memory: “Memory and its construction”.

The Maison d’Izieu is a living space built around a place of remembrance. Everyone leaves touched by the tragic conclusion to the lives of these young people, shattered and destroyed by war, injustice and intolerance.

103children

welcomed between 1943 and 44

36 000visitors

including 18,000 schoolchildren

2hours

length of visit

12euros

museum + house” ticket

GOOD TO KNOW

The story of the Jewish children of Maison d'zieu

The children of the Maison d’Izieu are the children of Jewish families from all over Europe, who found refuge in France to escape persecution during the interwar period.

The Vichy regime’s anti-Semitic laws of 1940 led these Jewish families to internment camps for foreigners, until in 1942, as part of its collaboration policy, Nazi Germany obtained France’s permission to deport them. A network of helpers was set up to rescue children from the camps and send them to foster homes.

In 1942, Sabine Zlatin, a Polish Jewish refugee and Red Cross nurse, rescued children from the growing threat of the Occupation of the Zone Libre. Pierre Marcel Wilter, Prefect of the Ain department, offered her the Maison d’izieu: “Here, you’ll have peace of mind”. The colony for child refugees from the Hérault region was born. Until June 1944, it welcomed 105 children, as persecution increased in the region, since Ain had been part of the occupation zone since 1943.

Many of the children taken in joined a relative or another foster home, and some were even smuggled across the border into Switzerland.

But the noose tightened around the colony and those who protected it. In April 1944, when 44 children remained at the colony and Sabine Zlatin was looking for a way to move, the Gestapo roundup put an end to hope. Only one adult would return from hell.

For the whole of Europe, the number of Jewish victims of the genocide is estimated at between five and six million. Of this total, some 1,250,000 Jewish children were murdered – almost nine out of ten.

Maison d'Izieu, Memorial to exterminated Jewish children

Elevation : 375m

70 route de Lambraz, Hameau de Lélinaz, 01300 Izieu