European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)
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I did not start immediately as a witness.
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Even though I was a member of the association of former resistance fighters, I had other political responsibilities.
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I had joined the French Communist Party in 1943, when it was still clandestine,
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I took on some political responsibilities on a local level.
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I would attend the annual meetings of the former resistant fighters association, but was no active member.
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Later, when the president of the association passed away,
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friends of mine pushed me into the presidency saying:
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“You were so active during the resistance; you were responsible for the liberation of Nanterre together with Louis Meunier, etc…”
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To quote Bertolt Brecht: “the lap of the repulsive beast is still fertile”;
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we had not and have not totally liberated ourselves from fascism.
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Therefore we felt the need to inform and to act.
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In school history books, there was very little information about the time:
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General De Gaulle’s speech and the Shoah.
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That is very important, but it is not enough to explain the complexity of World War II.
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We were asked by history teachers to talk about our experience in class.
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We thought it was important to do even more
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and started organizing school trips to different memorials, the places where Nazi crimes were committed.
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We organized school trips to Oradour s/Glane,
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to Struthof, the only Nazi concentration camp there was in France, in Alsace.
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We took classes of three different schools to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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Politique de confidentialité
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Politique de sécurité