While doing my research into the Resistance in my part of France I came upon a blog post concerning a memorial in the Charente region of France.
The Memorial to the Maquis Bir'Hacheim, built on a hill overlooking Chassenuil.To read more visit Dianes blog "My life in the Charente" by clicking on this link.
4 comments:
Though this looked familiar :) Thanks for the link. Diane
I recently read a book about the resistance and I had not realised that many of them were not French and many were in their late teens. I will look out the title of the book. What an impressive memorial!
Blu, apart from French and British members of the resistance, they also included Spanish, avoiding imprisonment and execution after losing the Spanish civil war, German anti-fascists, mainly communists , who served in the Spanish civil war. Luxembourgers who deserted the German Wehrmacht, (google Antoine Diederich). Hungarians, mainly Jews, most were working in Paris when France was invaded. Italian anti-fascists, mainly Socialist and communists. And Polish, soldiers mainly who didn't evacuate after the German invasion of France, and downed Polish pilots.Belgians mainly Communist, Only 2% of the adult French population were in the resistance, and France only recognised 220,000 after the war.
Theres an E Book about the resistance here http://books.google.fr/books?id=ambUiuH5ooUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=french+resistance+what+nationality&source=bl&ots=LluiN-isWg&sig=-T7m_FbOKb_3OOvaAxLx6i33d-Q&hl=en&ei=YxhYTeZsx4CEB6OZjfUM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q&f=false
Fascinating, it must have been so hard living in an occupied country! I will post the book title later!
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