The fourth edition of Freedom Week, initiated by the municipality with the aim of “unifying Villeneuvois and creating links”, will take place from May 27 to June 2. It is based on three main axes: the 2030 agenda and the challenges of sustainable development, “living better together” with neighborhood councils (read opposite) and the transmission of the history of the Resistance.
Committed since this year 2024, which marks the 80e anniversary of the Eysses uprising, in a memorial program planned to last three years, the municipality shows that it has follow-up ideas. An initiative led by Laurence Mandile-Picot, Seasons of Memory intertwine with Citizenship Week. The operation begins Monday May 27, National Resistance Day. Committed to the duty of memory, the students of the Marguerite-Brouillet school will perform the Song of the Partisans, at 11 a.m., in front of the war memorial.
Jean Lafaurie, always present
Wednesday May 29, Jean Lafaurie will make his return. The centenarian, a resistance fighter imprisoned in Eysses and deported to Dachau, devotes his old age to telling younger generations about these dark hours of history. From 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., he will be interviewed and filmed at L’Atelier, rue de Paris. His testimony will be included in the memorial documentary that the City is preparing on the incredible story of the Resistance fighters in Eysses.
Schoolchildren are involved in this quest. Meetings are planned with the Agenese illustrator David Cenou, who will present his comic strip “Un Juste”, with his screenwriter Patrice Guillon. Excerpts from poems, letters or novels evoking the Resistance will be read by volunteers from Pour Meilleur lire; while an exhibition, based on the comic strips of Vincent Dugomier and Benoît Ers, “Children of the Resistance”, awaits them elsewhere.
Sunday, meeting in Eysses
In the afternoon, other children, accompanied by Jean Lafaurie, will join middle school students from Penne-d’Agenais at the start of the walk they plan to take between the Eysses power plant and the memorial wagon, including the annual ceremony, organized by Anacr (1), will take place upon their arrival, at 4:30 p.m. This route, carried out on May 30, 1944 at a run and under threat from the SS of the Das-Reich division by the 1 200 prisoners from Eysses deported to Dachau, will be the highlight of this citizenship week, Sunday June 2.
The start of this March of Memory, open to all, will be given at 8:50 a.m., from the courtyard of the 12 resistance fighters who were shot. Participants, who must allow three hours of walking on the road (refreshments included) to complete the 12 kilometers separating them from Penne station, will first be able to discover the Pays d’art et d’histoire exhibition on the Resistance, at Eysses. On arrival, a tribute will be paid to the victims of the deportation in texts, song and violin. Walkers will then be able to return to Villeneuve with a bus made available to them.
(1) Monday May 27, on the occasion of the National Day of the Resistance, the local committee of the National Association of Veterans and Resistance Fighters (Anacr) invites the population to come and accompany its members to decorate the places of memory of the bastide. Simple bouquets will be placed at 9:45 a.m. in front of the steles of the Resistance and those shot at Eysses (Place de la Révolution), then route de Lacaussade, in front of the Denuel stele and, finally, boulevard Victor-Hugo, in front of the André Grabier plaque…. The official ceremony will then take place on Boulevard de la République, in front of the war memorial, from 11 a.m.
Neighborhood council picnic and public speaking contest
Citizenship Week also includes an unprecedented meeting of all neighborhood councilors on Saturday June 1 since their election two years ago. In Rogé, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., they will first be invited to think together about possible responses to incivility. After an aperitif offered by the City, a picnic will end the day. Monday May 27, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., at the cultural center, three classes of junior professionals from the Lot and Bastides high school will present their work, carried out as part of the Exp’Ose eloquence competition which, this year, invited people to think on a specialized subject: “How can struggles for social and climate justice contribute to building peaceful, united and sustainable societies on a global scale? » The Villeneuvois establishment is the only one in the department to send a group of four students to the regional final, on the 29th, in Bordeaux.
