October 12, 2022•Update: October 12, 2022
PARIS
A city north of Paris has removed the gate from a park honoring a Holocaust survivor over its resemblance to the entrance to Auschwitz, the concentration camp where the Nazi regime murdered some 1.1 million people.
Following social media furor over the strong resemblance, the city of Ermont – 17.2 kilometers (10.7 miles) from Paris – decided to remove the gate to Simone Veil Park.
In a statement on Tuesday, the city government regretted what it considered "unfounded comments" and said "no analogy or unfortunate 'coincidence' should be sought therein."
The municipality also asserted that it had consulted "the local Jewish community," which is "astonished by this polemic, since it does not itself see any malicious intent in this architectural decision."
Simone Veil, who died in 2017, was imprisoned at Auschwitz for several months in 1944, while her brother and parents died in the Nazi roundup of Jews.
Veil was France’s health minister in 1974-1979. She was also a member of the European Parliament in 1979-1993 and its president from 1979 to 1982.
One of the most grievous facts of World War II was the massacres committed in concentration and extermination camps, with Auschwitz in Poland the deadliest and most notorious.
Regarded as one of the greatest tragedies of humanity, the Nazi camps witnessed horrible human experimentation, executions in gas chambers, and crematoriums.
Many Jews and people from other marginalized groups became victims of the Nazis’ racist, eugenic policies.
Some 6 million Jewish civilians were massacred during World War II, an event that became known as the Holocaust.
