“80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, memory and fractures”

Eighty years ago, the Allied armies entered the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. The liberation of Buchenwald and Ravensbrück would follow. The world discovered the horror in the midst of the chaos: thousands of men and women, political opponents, resistance fighters, Jews persecuted simply for belonging to the people of the Promise. Cohorts of Lazarus were coming out of hell.

The sight of these survivors, the story of their ordeal was a shock; we perhaps knew of its existence, but its extent? But its exact nature: this methodical design to exterminate the Jews, as the eternal scapegoats of history, caused a metaphysical shake-up: how could man have conceived such a plan perfected by scientific and industrial progress? Was it the work of the devil or on the contrary of common humanity in its dark folds? What meaning did life have in these conditions?

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