Place Claude-Arnoult, this Sunday, April 25, noon. A man on a bicycle stops and watches a handful of personalities disperse. “Are we coming to inaugurate something?” He asks hesitantly. ” No. It was the commemoration in tribute to the victims of the Deportation. “Ah yes, I see …”, he returns as if saying “Joker”. Unlike the average person, another man knows exactly what today’s gathering means. Jean-Marie Virtt was 4 and a half years old when the Gestapo came to strike at the family home, rue du Général-Laplace. “My father listened to the radio a lot and was reported. My mother and I had to follow him. We were first taken to Beauregard. Near the current Lidl, there was a train station. It is from this place that we left in the cattle wagons, on January 24, 1943 ”, tells the one who now chairs the Thionville section of the National Federation of Resistance and Patriot deportees and internees.
The rest takes place in Silesia, a region of present-day Poland. The Virtt family will know three different internment camps before being liberated on July 24, 1945 by Soviet forces. “It wasn’t pretty to see; there were a lot of rapes… ”, he says soberly. Catching his breath, he continues: “We were forced to stay another six months there, because the sea, through which we were to return, was completely mined. In the end, we were sent back to France by train ”. After an obligatory passage through Paris, the family finds Thionville, but no longer its accommodation. Things took months to normalize and the survivors buried this atrocious and edifying page of history. “My parents never talked about it. Never… “
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Now every April 25, Jean-Marie Virtt is at the forefront, to pay tribute to all the victims of the Deportation. This Sunday, there was the mayor, the deputy, the sub-prefect, the rabbi, the flag bearers and some elected officials and anonymous. A very small committee which made it possible to get to the point: never forget.
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