By Ivan Roman, Regina Roch, Ashley DeMarco
The joyful laughter of children can be heard near L’école élémentaire des Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais as they run around in a playground. Seventy years ago, this Jewish elementary school became a historical landmark, where thousands of children were stripped away from their families and brought to concentration camps.
The history of what happened here is slowly being forgotten as decades pass by. When asked about the history of the school, 40-year-old, Elisa Palais, a special education teacher who works at the school, did not know exactly what happened there. However, she does know that it was a tragic and symbolic event.
“It’s a little bit strange, sometimes people are here to celebrate and to say, ‘okay, don’t forget,’ and so you remember and you say wow,” Palais said. She continued by describing the lack of knowledge she and students have of what went on decades ago. If it were not for the inscriptions plastered in front of the building, the history of their school may have been left unknown.
The school has made a complete transformation and children can now go to school peacefully. Although the school has gone through such a change, it is important to keep the memory of what happened there alive.