The departmental deportation ceremony to commemorate the roundup of May 21st 1944 was held on Sunday, May 22. It was attended by the sub-prefect from Villeneuve-sur-Lot as well as the deputy, regional and departmental advisers and representatives of memorial societies.
The event elicited great emotion from the participants, especially with Nadine Lafon’s militant speech against historians and those who propagate hateful ideologies. The villagers were then confronted with a dark day. All the speakers congratulated him for his intervention. The long martyrology, in which the names of all those who died during deportation from Lot-et-Garonne, is always a very intense moment, was made even more emotional by the addition of three primary school students reading it.
All speakers welcomed the “presence of schoolchildren who are soon to be the bearers for the memory of those who have disappeared”. The ceremony was incomplete without paying tribute to the courage of the Ukrainian people.
