« La Muette » (the mute) is the name of a low-income housing project in the suburbs of Paris. There are thousands like it in the Paris area. However, the walls of this building have been hiding a terrible secret for over 70 years. They have been silenced, forced to hide their history by being rehabilitated into a normal living area. As if nothing ever happened, as if the walls didn’t hold memories.
At first glance nothing seems strange. Tenants live in this four-story concrete building covered with old paint. It hasn’t changed since 1941. Back then, La Muette hosted the concentration camp of Drancy where almost 80,000 Jews were kept until most of them were sent to Auschwitz. Today, it is one of the only internment camps transformed into housing in all of Europe.
