The Resistance and Deportation History Center conserves and cares for archives and collections. What makes it different is its remarkable collection of posters, contemporary song sheets and material coming from the great figures of the Resistance. Some 700 filmed first person stories of members of the Resistance and deportees make it a key place for discovering the oral history of this period.

The EHRI portal offers access to information on Holocaust-related archival material held in institutions across Europe and beyond. It is searchable in a number of ways and covers a variety of materials. EHRI national reports provide an overview of the Second World War and Holocaust history as well as of the archival situation in the covered countries. An inventory of archival institutions that hold Holocaust-related material. Electronic descriptions and finding aids of Holocaust-related archival material.

Officially created in 1993, recognized as being of public utility and placed under the high patronage of the President of the Republic, the Resistance Foundation assumes three essential missions: to safeguard the memory of all individual and collective acts, which marked internal and external resistance against the Nazi occupier between 1940 and 1945, in particular by encouraging historical research in this area, and fight against all forms of negationism;
transmit to younger generations and civil society the individual and collective values ​​which motivated the actors of the Resistance in all its forms; and
perpetuate the memory of associations of former resistance fighters that can no longer exist on their own. The Resistance Foundation supports the action of an affiliated association, which works alongside it: Friends of the Resistance Foundation, Memory and Hopes of the Resistance (MER).

The French Resistance (1940-1944)
On Gallica, find a large array of documents on the French Resistance (1940-1944) during the Second World War: the monograph of Henri Michel, a work from the Documentation française on France in 1945, notably its internal wars, the poster of General de Gaulle's appeal of June 18, 1940, a leaflet from the Resistance and a copy of the clandestine newspaper "Combat". The Gallica blog devoted a post to the clandestine press of the Second World War and another to the resistance fighter Pierre Brossolette. The “French History through Images” Selections offer numerous representations of historical characters or events.

A tribute to the veterans and victims of WWII, this website is not only a chronological summary of the war but is rich in first-hand accounts and images. It features heroic stories and authentic footage. International and American viewpoint. In English.

During the Nazi occupation, some French writers refused to submit to the invaders and fought to preserve France’s cultural inheritance. Each in his own way, the four writers presented on this CD were deeply influenced by their resistance to the Germans. Louis Aragon was a famous French communist poet and writer. Drafted into the military in 1939, he took refuge in the southern "free zone" after France’s defeat and participated in the Resistance, both through literary activities and organization of resistance actions. His postwar poems also reflect his memories of the Resistance. Paul Eluard was one of the founders of surrealism movement. During World War II, his work became more political. Eluard joined the Resistance and fought the enemy with his poetry. His most famous writings during this period are his 1942 poem "Liberty" and Les sept poèmes d'amour en guerre in 1944.

In October 2001, the Amicale Châteaubriant Voves Rouillé Aincourt set up, with the help of the Region, the premises of the farm which are located at the entrance to the quarry where the 27 hostages were shot. A historical and iconographic exhibition is presented there. In October 2006, a museum was inaugurated on the farm with a reception area allowing visitors to get to grips with this historical period.

The arrests from 1940 of communists, trade unionists, their internment in hostage camps notably in Chateaubriant, Voves, Rouillé, Aincourt, and their movement to other camps, and life, resistance in these.
Some will be shot, others deported, others will escape and resume the resistance.

After securing the agreement of the Vichy government, German officials and French police conducted roundups of Jews in both the occupied and unoccupied zones of France throughout the summer of 1942. The Vél d'Hiv was part of a series of roundups codenamed Opération Vent printanier (Operation Spring Wind) that took place across the country in spring and summer of 1942. The Vélodrome d'Hiver (or "Vél d'Hiv") roundup was the largest French deportation of Jews during the Holocaust. It took place in Paris on July 16–17, 1942. -The United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial Museum.

This is a portal in conjunction with numerous partners (foundations, ministries, communities, museums, archives, associations, research centers, etc.), for the period of the French Resistance. The AERI (formerly Association for Studies on Internal Resistance) has been working on CD-ROMs (or DVD-ROMs) on local Resistance for more than ten years. Since January 1, 2012, it is within the Resistance Foundation that the AERI department has continued its activities. This has succeeded building up a dynamic network of several hundred people across France (teachers, resistance fighters, archivists, historians, students, academics, curators, representatives of communities and associations, etc.). More than 30,000 documents (posters, leaflets, letters, newspapers, photos, sound documents or film archives, etc.), 25,000 historical files (thematic, bibliographical), 50,000 names, 19,000 facts, and more than 6,000 referenced places, and 20,000 archival and bibliographical references. This site is open to the public and seeks to enhance digital cultural content by bringing together resources, and disseminating information.

Preeminent contemporary French Jewish archive and library. The seeds of the Shoah Memorial were planted during the war with the founding of the Centre de documentation Juive Contemporaine (Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center), an archive that collected evidence of anti-Jewish persecution. Later, the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr was created. Today the Memorial, a museum and archival center, is a place of mediation essential for the transmission of memory.

At the turn of the 1970s, Malraux returned to the adventure of the novel. He undertakes to carry out a post-war project, a large book on the Resistance. As usual, Malraux wrote down a certain number of scenes discontinuously and took notes intended to link them into a story. It is this previously unpublished preparatory work that has been put into form and highlighted here. For the title, André Malraux then thought of “No”, a monosyllable which alone sums up the spirit of the Resistance. The moment when Malraux begins to write is marked by the end of a period of heroization which had prevailed since the war. Although he knows that the Resistance was only the work of a minority of French people, he suffers from seeing all the attention focused on the passivity of others. Several occasions brought his war memories back into focus, the most notable being, in December 1964, the funeral oration of Jean Moulin. We offer it in an appendix with all of his speeches and messages on the Resistance, certain passages of which directly echo the fragments of “No”. But at the time when he delivered the last of these speeches, André Malraux had perhaps already given up on continuing to write the novel. Indeed, the attraction of memorial writing - his Antimemoires -, for which he then invents a new poetics, prevails over fiction. If the drafts of "Non" include beautiful pieces, they do not seem to be up to the level of L'Espoir, once the enthusiasm of the beginnings has passed. From this abandoned project, this volume allows us to save major scenes - the assault of a tank by an infantryman or a metaphysical dialogue between an abbot and an ethnologist soldier - and to make André Malraux's No resonate again and again, alias Colonel Berger.

RetroNews is the press site of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It provides free and open access to more than 2,000 titles published between 1631 and 1952. In addition to the resources present on Gallica, RetroNews is both a digital space for consultation of archives, a research tool and a magazine for everyone allowing you to discover history through the press archives. You will find many of of same papers here as on Gallica Presse et revues, but with better search tools.

This interactive map and timeline has geographic visuals for the pre-war period, individual events for the years 1939-1945 and a post-war period. This timeline helps to place in context not only the dates but the geographic areas around the globe where these complicated events of WWII occurred. An excellent resource for overall comprehension of these harrowing years.

Established in 1953 by an act of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, is entrusted with the task of commemorating, documenting, researching and educating about the Holocaust: remembering the six million Jews murdered by the German Nazis and their collaborators, the destroyed Jewish communities, and the ghetto and resistance fighters; and honoring the Righteous Among the Nations who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem encompasses 45 acres on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem and is comprised of various museums, research and education centers, monuments and memorials. Among these are the Museum Complex, the Hall of Remembrance, the Valley of the Communities and the Children’s Memorial. ″And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name (a ΄yad vashem΄)... that shall not be cut off.″ (Isaiah, chapter 56, verse 5)

Charles de Gaulle rose from French soldier in World War I to exiled leader and, eventually, president of the Fifth Republic. He served as president from 1959 to 1969. A dedicated patriot, de Gaulle did not accept France's surrender to Germany in 1940. He instead fled to England, where he became a leader of the Free French movement, with the support of British prime minister Winston Churchill. From London, de Gaulle broadcast a message across the English Channel to his countrymen, calling for them to continue to resist the German occupation. He also organized soldiers from French colonies to fight alongside the allied troops.

The rise to prominence and the influence of Resistance journalists, the systemic problems the Resistance identified with the pre-war media, and the chaos of the Liberation set the stage for an industry-wide catharsis that would totally transform the face of journalism in France.

Albert Camus, a native of French Algeria, was too ill with tuberculosis to physically fight in the Resistance, but he edited the underground journal Combat alongside Jean-Paul Sartre. Camus’ father, Lucien Auguste Camus, was killed in WWI in 1914, not even a year after his son’s birth in 1913. He died of wounds from the Battle of the Marne at the Saint-Brieuc hospital. Camus never knew his father, but his posthumously-published novel, The First Man, reflects a lifelong quest to find out how Lucien Camus lived and died. Camus was killed in a car crash in 1960 at the age of 46 and this unpublished book was found at the accident site with his belongings. With the help of his daughter, Catherine Camus, The First Man was published almost thirty years later, in 1994.

US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
During the interwar period, France was one of the more liberal countries in welcoming Jewish immigrants, many of them from eastern Europe. After World War I, thousands of Jews viewed France as a European land of equality and opportunity and helped to make its capital, Paris, a thriving center of Jewish cultural life.

A critique on the myth of the Resistance and comparison of France's limited Resistance with other occupied European countries. Also discusses the views on the Resistance of British and American leadership.

From the start of the German Occupation, newspapers were produced and distributed clandestinely by individuals wishing to fight against official propaganda and continue the fight until the liberation of French territory. This press, witness to a merciless war and this “flame of the Resistance” which has not been extinguished, is now accessible in Gallica. The currently available digitized corpus amounts to more than 1,350 titles, from the collections of the National Library and the National Resistance Museum of Champigny-sur-Marne.

Full text available. In September 1930 Great Britain and France declare war on Germany after its invasion of Poland. In May 1940 Germany invades Belgium and France. Maréchal Pétain tells the French on 17 June 1940 that he is seeking an armistice, de Gaulle makes his first speech from London on 18 June, and the Assemblée nationale votes full powers to Pétain on 10 July. After the months of military inactivity since the declaration of the state of war, which in English and in French are granted the status of a title- "the phoney war" and la drôle de guerre-historical events and dates tumble over one another. France's defeat has the suddenness of a total collapse, and arguments rumble on as to who or what was responsible. To this military débâcle corresponds the collapse of the Third Republic, replaced by the État française with Pétain as Head of State, installed at Vichy in what has become the southern non-occupied zone. (introduction)

Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), the Jewish children’s welfare organization, was founded in Russia in 1912 by a group of young doctors committed to offering sanitary protection and health benefits to poor Jews. The organization moved in 1917 to Berlin where Albert Einstein was its honorary president. In 1933, it moved to Paris, and in 1940, once again to escape the Nazis, it moved to Montpellier in the non-occupied south of France.

With, Olivier Wieviorka Historien, professeur à l'École normale supérieure de Paris-Saclay.

Iconic entertainer of the Jazz Age, famous for her risqué performances, Josephine Baker responded to the start of World War II by becoming a spy for the French Resistance. Known as the “Creole Goddess” of France, Baker used her celebrity to gain access to high-ranking Axis officials.

Limited Access (search only) HathiTrust

Varian Fry (1907–1967) was an American journalist who helped anti-Nazi refugees escape from France.
Varian Fry was born in New York City on October 15, 1907. He graduated in 1931 with a degree in classics from Harvard University, moved back to New York City, and married Eileen Hughes, an editor at Atlantic Monthly.

At 23:15 hours on 5 June 1944, a broadcast was made from the BBC in London. It was the second part of the poem Chanson d’Automne – “Blessent mon coeur, d’une langueur, monotone” (“wound my heart with a monotonous languor”). Upon hearing this, Resistance leaders in France knew this was a call to arms as the Allied invasion was imminent. Their job, to tie up German forces, to prevent them engaging with the Allies. On the Vercors Massif, a plateau just south of Grenoble in the south-east of the country, it was something they had been waiting for, for four years. The Vercors Uprising had begun.Scattered around the plateau were a number of camps containing large groups of maquisards, armed young patriots led by ex-French army officers. Over the last few years they had grown to over four thousand strong. These men had chosen to fight the Nazis rather than be subjected to the humiliation of the STO order (Service du Travail Obligatoire) which the government in Vichy had agreed with their Nazi puppet-masters in Berlin. This order involved the forced deportation of men over the age of twenty to work in Germany, to assist the Nazi war effort. Rather than do this, thousands took to the hills in places such as the Vosges and the Vercors to offer their services to the Maquis, whilst many more fled to North Africa to join the Free French.

“To its great men, the grateful fatherland, ” says the inscription at the entrance of the Panthéon in Paris, a magnificent mausoleum honoring many heroes of French history, including Jean Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo or Voltaire. Only six of them are heroines though. Let’s uncover who these exceptional women were and what their stories that keep inspiring until today are.

This guide provides an overview of Lundy’s eight sketchbooks comprising a "visual diary" created by the architect during his service in World War II, with links to the digitized collection materials and information about related content. Noted architect Victor Alfred Lundy was born in 1923 in New York City. He served in the U.S. 26th Infantry Division during World War II. In 1942, Lundy was 19, studying to be an architect in New York City. Excited about rebuilding Europe post-war, he and other college men enlisted in the Army Special Training Program (ASTP). His visual diaries comprised of 159 pencil drawings in 8 sketchbooks bring to life his wartime experience.

As the United States enters the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, we remember the many hardships Jewish people have overcome. In this blog we specifically explore the lesser-known area of intellectual property (IP) leading up to and during World War II. Beginning in 1933, the Nazi German state began pressuring Jewish business owners to sell their businesses far below market value. By 1938, a majority of Jewish-owned businesses were already sold or out of business when this process, called Aryanization, became compulsory after Kristallnacht.

“D-Day”: a military term for the day set for a planned attack, and synonymous with the most famous invasion of World War II, when more than 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. For those who participated, D-Day was more than a historic event. It was a day for which they endured years of training and traveled thousands of miles; a day during which they witnessed horrific carnage, lost friends, and persevered against tremendous odds; a day which set the scene for even greater challenges to come.