The “deliberate destruction” of a memorial stele honoring Holocaust victims in Montigny-Lengrain (Aisne) was discovered on Sunday, October 19, by a gendarmerie patrol, the department prefecture announced on Monday, condemning these “heinous acts” in a statement.
A photo provided by the prefecture shows the memorial’s white wall nearly leveled to its foundation. A commemorative plaque that had been screwed onto it has disappeared. A gendarmerie investigation has been opened under the authority of the Soissons prosecutor’s office.
The Aisne prefect “condemns in the strongest terms these heinous acts that violate the memory of the deportees and tarnish our republican values,” according to the prefecture’s statement.
The small monument had been inaugurated in the summer of 2024 to honor the deportees of convoy 7909, a Nazi “death train” that departed from Compiègne (Oise) in July 1944 bound for the Dachau concentration camp (southern Germany) and passed through the Aisne region.