
The destruction of the Jews of Europe and the Holocaust with bullets
This part of the museum deals with the persecution of Jews before their mass extermination.

The first thing that comes to mind is the extermination of European Jews, necessary in the eyes of the Nazis for the biological survival and even the existence of the German nation. Once the shock of Hitler’s 30 January 1939 speech, announcing that a new World War would provoke the "destruction of the Jews" is over, the first section of the room on the right looks back over the phases of Jewish persecution in Europe leading up to their systematic extermination.
In the Eastern regions, using the war against the USSR as a pretext, between 1.5 and 2 million Jews were shot. In the centre of the room, there is a display reserved for the "Holocaust by bullets" or close-up killings.
Amateur SS films, photographs, objects collected by the teams of Father Patrick Desbois in Ukraine and Belarus (objects abandoned by both victims and butchers), and video testimonies of those who saw these executions in broad daylight, bear witness to this genocide which started in June 1941, away from the death camps.