Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday hailed the role played by the Resistance in helping the Allied forces to liberate France by participating in a tribute to some 70 Resistance fighters executed by the Germans in Caen prison on June 6, 1944.
Two days of ceremonies
At the end of this ceremony organized as part of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day, the Head of State declared that it was "extremely important" to "salute the involvement of the Resistance and martyrs who have fallen" after having "honored this (Wednesday) morning all the Allied forces who landed on June 6 in the morning to release French soil." "It is the alliance of allied forces from around the world, our Resistance and the French military that has helped to liberate the country.We must not forget any of these components," said Emmanuel Macron to the press.
The head of state arrived late in the afternoon in Caen after attending a D-Day ceremony in Portsmouth, in the south of England, with Queen Elizabeth II, Donald Trump, Angela Merkel and 300 veterans. He will attend Thursday several ceremonies near the landing beaches with the US President, with whom he will have an interview during which the two leaders could discuss sensitive issues such as trade tensions or multilateralism.
First president to pay tribute
For Emmanuel Macron, "these allied forces that knew how to put together to free us from tyranny, it is also those who were able to build after the second world conflict the structures of contemporary multilateralism, the United Nations (...), the NATO and the European Union, we must not make history stammer " Emmanuel Macron is the first president to pay tribute to the 70 to 80 detainees, mostly Resistance, shot by the Gestapo in Caen prison the morning of June 6, 1944, while the Allied troops had just landed and the station of the city was bombed. Until today, their remains have still not been found despite the many researches since 1944.
Emmanuel Macron did not speak during the ceremony, which was attended by nearly 500 people, including five war veterans and family members of 35 of the 71 executed prisoners who were identified. They were sitting in front of the closed doors of the prison whose walls bear two frames with the black and white photos of the shots.
White roses, Song of the partisans and wreath laying
In this prison, "was perpetrated one of those massacres that only the Nazis could orchestrate," said Bernard Duval, a former prison inmate, he left two weeks before the massacre to be deported to Germany. Under the pressure of Allied armies recently landed on our shores, the Germans wanted to remove from their enemies the Resistance prisoners interned in the cells of this prison, "he added.
After his testimony, were named one by one the names of all the shots, grouped by networks of the Resistance, such as the Alliance Network or the one of the Rifles Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FPT). White roses have been deposited by their descendants under their portraits. Students from two schools in Caen then spoke of the words "duty of remembrance", "resistance", "war", "freedom", "courage" and "peace". Then, after a Song of the Partisans, the hymn of the Resistance, sung by the young, Emmanuel Macron laid a wreath under the commemorative plaque.