The Department of French,
the Department of Jewish Studies,
the Program in Comparative Literature,
and the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life
present a lecture by Hélène Mouchard-Zay
Hélène Mouchard-Zay is the daughter of Jean Zay (1904–1944), Education Minister in the 1936 Front Populaire government, imprisoned by the Vichy regime in 1940, and murdered by the “Milice” four years later. She has been involved in the establishment of her father’s archives and in the publication of his writings. Hélène Mouchard-Zay is also the president of the CERCIL, the Center for Study and Research on the Internment Camps in Loiret, which she founded in 1991 in Orléans, France. The Center is now complemented by the Memorial to the Internment in Loiret, which opened in 2011. The Memorial includes documentation on the internment of Jews in the region as well as exhibits on daily life during internment. Between 1940 and 1944, more than 16,000 Jews, including about 4,700 children, were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau from Loiret, most of them from the internment camps; this was the largest camp, where French authorities interned about 1,200 Gypsies, including 706 children, between 1941 and 1945.