The Republic is "necessary, vital, just," says Macron during tribute to Jean Moulin

Europe 1 with AFP 18:12 p.m., May 08, 2023

The Republic is "necessary, vital and just", said Monday Emmanuel Macron during the tribute to Jean Moulin from the Memorial of the prison of Montluc in Lyon. The head of state associated the name of the former prefect and leader of the resistance who died in 1943 under torture with the historian Marc Bloch, also tortured and shot in 1944: "Moulin and Bloch tell us that the French Republic is by definition neither good nor bad, it is necessary, vital, just."

"Let us have confidence in ourselves and in those who will follow us"

Jean Moulin "had the intimate certainty, ineradicable, that the France in which he believed would be victorious, that others if not him would reap the fruits," added Emmanuel Macron. As for the Nazis, "they stumbled on something silent that was brewing in the breasts (...), the fragile and eternal spirit of resistance" that "deeply characterizes our people," said Emmanuel Macron.

"But it is not enough for justice to be done, for a door to lock, for the last executioner to go behind bars," he added, before paying tribute to the memory smugglers. To continue this transmission, "let us have confidence in ourselves and in those who will follow us," he said.

Claude Bloch, 94, who spent 15 years in prison before being deported to Auschwitz, and who accompanied the president in his walk, said he was "satisfied with the speech" to the press. He said: "In cells, seven or eight I still wonder today how they could last 24 hours a day. In the evening we would lie on the floor, fight against bedbugs."

But "the most terrible thing was in the morning when there were these calls from prisoners and the call ended with the formula 'with luggage' or 'without luggage'," said Claude Bloch. "When it was 'without luggage', we knew it meant that we were going to leave the prison and be shot during the day" otherwise "it was to be transferred elsewhere".