8 May is Victory in Europe Day and there are commemorations all
over to celebrate the end of the Second World War in Europe. The
memorial plaque on the town hall in the photo is in a tiny village in
the Touraine Loire Valley and names two local Communists who joined
the Resistance and were killed. The ceremony in the village will
begin at the town hall, with the laying of wreaths, then villagers
will march to the cemetery, a few hundred metres away, where more
wreaths will be laid at the foot of the War Memorial. Then there will
be drinks and cake in thevillage hall.
The Communists were the first target for deportation and execution in
France by Hitler's Nazis. Many escaped and joined the Resistance.
Because they were already used to operating clandestinely, they
formed an organised Resistance immediately that France fell. But by
the end of the War, their vision of how France should go forward did
not suit de Gaulle and they were sidelined.
Gaston Breton,
53 years old, was born in the tiny village of Charnizay but lived in
Tours, where he ran a café. He was also an active and militant
Communist and a Resistance organiser, who had acquired a supply of
explosives for his group and held secret meetings at his house. After
documents implicating him were discovered in Paris he was arrested in
Tours by the French police for distributing pamphlets. On 21 February
1942 he was transferred to Paris and on 21 March he was handed over
to the German authorities and held at Fresnes prison, then
Cherche-Midi. On 24 August the Gestapo gathered together a group of
sixty Resistance prisoners and used them as hostages at the Fort de
Romainville.
Following a Resistance attack on the Cinéma
Rex in Paris 110 hostages were executed in reprisal. Forty-six of
them came from Fort de Romainville and Gaston Breton was one of them.
Another hostage who witnessed these events stated "On September
20, 1942, after the roll call, all our comrades were gathered and put
in a bunker to spend their last night. We saw them leave at 7:00 a.
m. on September 21, and they were all brave and proud. No gesture of
impatience could be seen on their emaciated faces. All these comrades
bravely awaited death, and looked with contempt at their
executioners. At 11 o'clock, they fell in front of the
enemy."
Regina Breton, Gaston's wife, was arrested at
the same time as he was and interned in La Santé (the big prison in
the centre of Paris near Montparnasse). She was deported to
Ravensbruck on 12 March 1945 and died in this notorious camp.
Their
three young children remained in the family home.
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1 comment:
It's always with a serrement de cœur that I read reports on Résistance in France.
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