While a national tribute is paid to Missak Manouchian and the FTP-MOI fighters, the opportunity is offered to return to a commitment that is often emphasized: foreigners are overrepresented in the French Resistance.

We will avoid the mistake that would suggest that the majority of foreigners chose this clandestine fight, but the proportion is significantly higher than among the French, whether we focus on political action, armed struggle, intelligence or rescue.

This is especially the case among refugees who have had to flee the persecution and repression that proliferate in Europe between the two world wars, without forgetting the militant reserves offered by the exiles who have to flee Spain, which has become Franco.

Targeted again in France, singularly after the defeat, both by the Germans and by the French state, they are all the more encouraged to act.

This exhibition is dedicated to these men and women. If the diversity of origins is obvious, what strikes, among these fighters, is a form of identity convergence, far from the assignments to community residence that are often attributed to them at a distance, today, by anachronism.

Foreign or naturalized, Armenian or Spanish, Italian or Central European Jews, they are often internationalists or at least open to the world but also, for the most part, deeply attached to France, not that of Vichy of course, but to France for human rights and the French Revolution.

Getting to the Shoah Memorial

The Shoah Memorial
Address: 17 rue Geoffroy-l’Asnier 75004 Paris
Tel.: 01 42 77 44 72
E-mail: contact@memorialdelashoah.org
Website: www.memorialdelashoah.org

The Shoah Memorial is open from Sunday to Friday

Closed on the following holidays: 1 January, 11 and 17 april, 1 and 31 may, 14 July, 15 august and 25 December. 

Metro: Saint-Paul or Hôtel-de-Ville (line 1), Pont-Marie (line 7)

Bus: 96, 69, 76, 67, Balabus

Parking: Baudoyer (place Baudoyer), Lobau, Pont-Marie (rue de l’Hôtel-de-Ville).

Accessible to visitors with disabilities