What does it feel like to have seen Auschwitz? “It’s hard to explain. We are caught up in something that is beyond us, even when we are informedtestifies Patrick Hipeau. Once there, we are picked up, we don't know by what: we don't leave the way we came. » Patrick Hipeau is the secretary of the Deux-Sèvres association Mémoireshared which, since 2018, has organized trips to the Auschwitz extermination camp for schoolchildren but also individuals. Next trip, from April 28 to May 2, 2025.
“It’s the first thing we see, the immensity of the site”
At the head of Shared Memory, Michael Butting, from Niort of German origin. “The Holocaust is a subject that has preoccupied me ever since I had political thoughts. I was born in 1954: I grew up in Germany at a time when when you asked your parents questions on the subject, you didn't get an answer. »
In the 1970s, Michael Butting had the opportunity to discover Auschwitz. Over time, settled in France, he said to himself one day that he would have to make the trip again with his children, family, friends. In 2018, the idea of creating an association was born. Since then, 200 people, from Deux-Sèvres and beyond, have left with Shared Memory.
On arrival at the gate of the Auschwitz Birkenau camp.
© (Shared Memory Photo)
What motivates the participants? Some are driven by family history. This is the case of Patrick Hipeau, whose grandfather died during deportation. “Others are people passionate about History and especially this era. Often, people may want to go there but don't know how. And they want to live this experience together with other people.”explains Michael Butting.
The association takes charge of everything from Paris or Krakow in Poland. The first morning of three and a half hours is devoted to visiting Auschwitz-1, a former Polish army barracks transformed into a concentration camp. Then the next day, it was the turn of the extermination camp, Auschwitz 2-Birkenau. Four hours of visit. “What is striking, reports Patrick Hipeauit's the size: it's the first thing we see, the immensity of the site. »
The work of guides is vital. “It is very important to do this visit accompanied, in a group, with time for discussion, to help decompress”insists Michael Butting. Also on the program, a visit to the neighboring town of Oswiecim, Auschwitz in Polish, because it “It’s important to see that there is a city, a life next to all that.” With school children, we spend hours going over what we have seen. “They ask a lot of questions that you might not dare ask yourself. » No students below the third grade in groups: “And again, it’s just, they really have to be well prepared. »
Next date in sight, April 28, therefore. Niort-Auschwitz is 1,352 kilometers as the crow flies. In reality, a crazy distance, impossible to measure, separates the two worlds. Shared memory helps get over it.
landmarks
> Shared Memory also organizes events in Deux-Sèvres around the Shoah. In 2024, three conferences for the general public were given in Parthenay, Sompt, a commune in Mellois where Ida Grinspan (1929-2918), deported to Auschwitz when she was a child, lived, and at the Moulin du Roc in Niort, in parallel with the screening of the film “ The area of interest ». A play was also performed in Sompt.
> The trip lasts five days. The stay in Poland costs €430 covering full board, museum entries and travel. You must add the price of the plane flight from Paris to Krakow. The program includes an exhibition “ Labyrinths », of the Polish deportee Marian Kolodziej, who arrived at Auschwitz in one of the first convoys and was released in Mauthausen in 1945.
> Contacts. Such. 06.20.41.35.96 or by email: [email protected]
