MUSÉE DE LA RÉSISTANCE ET DE LA DÉPORTATION DE LYON

The history of Lyon dates back to Roman times when Lugdúnum was founded on the hill of Fourvière as a colony in 43 BC by Lucius Munacius Plancus on the site of a Celtic fortification called Lug[o]dunon -from the Celtic god Lug (light) and dúnon (fortress). And since then this city has not ceased to be a key cultural and commercial centre for the European continent.

Lyon is always at the forefront of cultural movements and not even the barbarity of World War II and the repression suffered by the people of Lyon stopped the yearning for freedom that was concentrated in the Resistance in the face of episodes as bloody as the Nazi occupation.

Today, when some of those survivors of barbarity are still alive, the Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation explains what happened, why and how the brave people of Lyon were able to resist one of the darkest chapters in the recent history of Europe.

 

Historical Memory serves not only to know what happened, but also to raise awareness that crimes against humanity like these must not happen again and that we must reject the populisms that later lead to these authoritarianisms.

 

Last summer, Joseph, Claire and The Grandma visited this museum that stirs your soul by exposing the worst of the human condition in the form of barbarity, but also the best in the form of solidarity and resistance.

 

Let's not forget the past, because it is the best teacher for the present and the future.

The Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation (Center for the History of the Resistance and Deportation) is a museum in Lyon, France.

Located on the former site of a French military health school (École de Santé Militaire) and opened in 1992, it chronicles the French Resistance as well as Jewish deportation in World War II.

The school was occupied by the Germans in the spring of 1943, and used by Lyon's Gestapo chief, Klaus Barbie, to torture resistance members, including Jean Moulin. It was destroyed by Allied aircraft on May 26, 1944.

In 1965, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Liberation, former resistance fighters and deportees from Lyon formed an association with a view to creating a museum of the Second World War, devoted more particularly to the resistance and the deportation of resistance fighters. 

A first museum opened its doors on May 8, 1967. It was installed in two rooms of the Natural History Museum of Lyon located rue Boileau (6th arrondissement).

During the 1980s, the association of Friends of the Resistance and Deportation Museum asked the City of Lyon to obtain larger premises. This request met with a particular echo at the time of the trial of Klaus Barbie, which was held from May 11 to July 4, 1987, before the Rhône Court of Assizes. Former head of the Gestapo and torturer, Klaus Barbie was tried for crimes against humanity (the first trial under this charge in France).

Following this trial, in 1989, the mayor of Lyon Michel Noir entrusted Alain Jacubowicz (deputy delegate for citizens' rights and lawyer for the civil parties during the Barbie trial) with the mission of supporting the creation of a dedicated municipal museum to World War II. The museum itself was inaugurated on October 15, 1992.

On July 16, 2017, the CHRD esplanade was named Pierre Robert de Saint-Vincent.

More information: CHRD 

Niklaus "Klaus" Barbie (25 October 1913-25 September 1991) was a German officer of the Schutzstaffel and Sicherheitsdienst who worked in Vichy France during World War II. 

He became known as the Butcher of Lyon for having personally tortured prisoners -primarily Jews and members of the French Resistance- as the head of the Gestapo in Lyon.

After the war, United States intelligence services employed him for his anti-communist efforts and aided his escape to Bolivia, where he advised the dictatorial regime on how to repress opposition through torture. 

In 1983, the United States apologised to France for the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps helping him escape to Bolivia, aiding Barbie's escape from an outstanding arrest warrant.

In 1972, it was discovered he was in Bolivia. While in Bolivia, the West German Intelligence Service recruited him. Barbie is suspected of having had a role in the Bolivian coup d'état orchestrated by Luis García Meza in 1980. After the fall of the dictatorship, Barbie lost the protection of the government in La Paz.

In 1983, he was arrested and extradited to France, where he was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. Although he had been sentenced to death in absentia twice earlier, in 1947 and 1954, capital punishment had been abolished in France in 1981. Barbie died of cancer in 1991, at age 77, in his Lyon prison cell.

More information: BBC

He will soon be claiming that
the Resistance has liberated the world.

Coco Chanel