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France To the Heroes of the Résistance The occupation and the establishment of the Vichy regime were experienced in France as a traumatic loss of unity. According to a legal definition already postulated during the War, the Republic never ceased to exist. The majority of the French people had engaged in the resistance against the Vichy government and the occupation and, under the leadership of General de Gaulle together with the allies, had finally freed the country, it was said. However, diametrically opposite assessments of the resistance soon developed between the Communists and the Gaullists. By the beginning of the 1960s the controversy had lost some of its severity. A relative consensus was once more established to the effect that the memory of the Résistance should be one of the pillars of patriotic feeling. The huge number of innocent victims played an equally important role. Among the latter, the deportees kindled the strongest emotions, for the deportation was emblematic of the totalitarian practices of the Nazi state. The problem of how to deal with the collaboration was also of great importance in post-War France. France was among the strictest nations in dealing with collaborators. Collaboration was seen as the most extreme form of betrayal, irrespective of whether the collaborators acted out of political motives or not. Right after the War some 10,000 collaborators were executed either summarily or without a proper court trial. Later the regular courts sentenced some 140,000 persons. Many thousands received the death penalty. These "purges" gave the appearance of coming to terms with the topic of collaboration. |
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In 1958 the "Mémorial de la France combattante" was erected in Fort Mont-Valérien, northeast of Paris, to the memory of the victims of the Résistance. The dominant element is a large Cross of Lorraine, the emblem of the Résistance movement "France combattante" organized by General de Gaulle in 1942, and the symbol of Free France. The memorial was built on the very spot where the Germans had shot some 1,000 captured Résistance fighters and hostages. Four years after the memorial was erected a stamp depicting the memorial was issued. This helped to make it popular with the stamp-enthused French. |
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The survivors of the Nazi camps bore witness to their experiences very soon and in great numbers. The political prisoner Suzanne Busson, who had been imprisoned in Ravensbrück and Mauthausen, published her memoirs in 1946 under the title "Dans les griffes des Nazies" (In the Clawes of the Nazis). On the cover is the drawing of a woman who is identified as a political prisoner by the red chevron on her arm. Her arm lies protectively around the shoulder of another prisoner. This gesture emphasizes the solidarity among political prisoners. |
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