FRANCE ? A memorial marking the role of the France’s Vichy government in shipping Jews and others to Nazi death camps will be created at Rivesaltes, an internment facility near France’s border with Spain, representatives of the French government and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, which will assist in the effort, announced Monday.

It will be the first official Holocaust memorial in Southern France, the stronghold of the Vichy government, which collaborated with the Nazis from 1940 to 1944. Rivesaltes was the most active way station for persecuted Jews and political opponents.

Author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, who survived nine months in Auschwitz and other camps, observed that Jacques Chirac was the first president to talk publicly about France’s responsibility in World War II atrocities.

Wiesel, the founding chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, said, “It took so long for France to do certain things because of unpleasant memories.”