Emmanuel Macron announced on Saturday November 23, 2024 in Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin) that the historian and resistance fighter Marc Bloch would enter the Pantheon. “For his work, his teaching and his courage, we decide that Marc Bloch will enter the Pantheon”declared the Head of State on the occasion of the 80e anniversary of the Liberation of Strasbourg, November 23, 1944.
He also announced that of Robert Badinter, the father of the abolition of the death penalty who died on February 9, who will enter the Pantheon before Marc Bloch in 2025.
“Body and soul against Nazism”
Marc Bloch's family welcomed his pantheonization, long called for by political leaders and historians. “It’s a great emotion and pride. He gave himself body and soul for freedom and against Nazism.”declared his granddaughter Suzette Bloch to AFP.
Professor of Middle Ages history at the University of Strasbourg from 1919 to 1936, Marc Bloch profoundly renewed the field of historical research by extending it to sociology, geography, psychology and economics. Captain and Croix de Guerre in 1914-1918, mobilized again in 1939, Marc Bloch analyzed implacably in The Strange Defeat the French debacle in the face of the German offensive in May-June 1940.
Remaining in France despite the repression which fell on the Jews, Marc Bloch joined the Resistance in 1943, of which he became one of the leaders for the Lyon region. “Marc Bloch never despaired of the responsibility of our people, certain that courage is not a matter of career or caste”summarized Emmanuel Macron.
He was arrested on March 8, 1944 in Lyon, imprisoned and tortured in Montluc prison, and shot on June 16 with 29 of his comrades.
The family wants to exclude the far right from the ceremony
In a letter to the President of the Republic, the family requests, in view of its commitment, that “the extreme right, in all its forms, be excluded from any participation in the ceremony” entrance to the Pantheon. “The work of this convinced patriot is profoundly anti-nationalist, constructed against the national novel and the reduction of French history to national borders”write his granddaughter Suzette Bloch and his great-grandson Matis Bloch, on behalf of the beneficiaries.
The family also wishes that the tribute be “purely civil”as Marc Bloch requested in his will.
