The letter, received by Minister of Justice Liisa Pakosta (Eesti 200) and Minister of Foreign Affairs Margus Tsahkna (Eesti 200) in beginning of April, concerns the museum set to open in 2027 at the Patarei Sea Fortress.

Estonia currently plans to name the center the International Museum for the Victims of Communism. In the French view, however, this name would be overly restrictive.

"The name of the Museum should reflect its whole history, and not only the evils of the Soviet communist regime," the embassy wrote, noting the future museum will include a specific area dedicated to victims of the Holocaust.

"The Patarei prison was the final arrival point of 300 of the Jewish deportees of Convoy 73, which left Drancy in France on May 15, 1944 to Lithuania and Estonia. They lived in inhumane conditions, were forced to perform slave labor, and some of them were executed," the embassy stated.

"Among them were André and Jean Jacob, father and brother of Simone Veil, the first Chairwoman of the European Parliament (1979–1982) and Minister in France. Only 22 returned."

France proposed two alternative versions for the name: the International Museum for the Victims of Communism and Nazism or the International Museum for the Victims of Totalitarian Regimes.

"We do not deny its portrayal of Soviet terror, we abide by a simple rule: the imperative need to preserve the traces of the victims of alI terrors. The singularity of each memory has to be showed, in order not to be denied," the letter read.

Newspaper Eesti Ekspress reported that last summer Pakosta received a similar proposal from the Estonian Jewish Museum and Estonia's Chief Rabbi Efraim Shmuel Kot. At the time, the justice minister responded that the ministry does not plan to change the name.

However, she promised that Holocaust victims would not be forgotten, with a dedicated area set aside for them in the 5,000-square-meter museum.

Patarei Prison, also known as Patarei, is a complex of buildings located on the shore of Tallinn Bay that was used as a prison from 1919 to 2005. On June 2, 2010, a memorial was unveiled at the main entrance of the Central Prison in honor of 73 French Jews (Convoy 73) who were deported from France to the Central Prison in 1944 by the German occupation authorities.

On May 14, 2019, with the support of the Estonian state, the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory opened an exhibition area in the eastern wing of the prison. The exhibition presents the fate of prisoners, the use of the building during the Soviet (1940–1941, 1944–1991) and German (1941–1944) occupations, and introduces the crimes and ideology of communism in an international context.

The institute says the museum will be the "world's first comprehensive museum on communist crimes." It will also facilitate research and raise awareness with online projects, "ensuring that the inhuman nature of communist regimes and ideology will never be forgotten."

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