Archive hunters
Audio 48:30
Napoleon document.
© Daphné Gastaldi
By: Valérie Nivelon
52 min
They exercise a rare profession.
They are archive hunters and track down looted, stolen or missing French archives.
Whether it is documents signed by Napoleon, Intelligence archives recovered by Moscow or Jewish manuscripts.
For historical issues but also issues of Defense or intelligence sometimes, French public archives belong to the State and are considered a national treasure.
If the reasons for their disappearance are various, from the war trophy to the obsessive collector, including theft or spoliation, these lost archives must be recovered at all costs.
Publicity
A long format report proposed by Daphné Gastaldi.
All our thanks to the "Historical Defense Department and the Heritage, Memory and Archives Directorate of the Ministry of the Armed Forces".
And for those who are passionate about the Moscow fund like us, we recommend the books by Sophie Coeuré entitled:
La Mémoire spoliée,
published by Payot and
Les fonds de Moscow,
at the University presses of Rennes.
Slideshow
{{scope.counterText}}
{{scope.legend}} © {{scope.credits}}
{{scope.counterText}}
i
{{scope.legend}}
© {{scope.credits}}
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Heritage
History
Culture
On the same subject
A week of news
Raphaëlle Bacqué: "De Gaulle president, ten years of unpublished archives of the Élysée"
Lines of defense
Discovering the photographic archives of the French army
Africa report
Senegal: abandoned for years, audiovisual archives are getting a makeover