Emmanuel Macron could announce today, in Strasbourg, the entry into the Pantheon of academic and resistance fighter Marc Bloch, according to several sources. At the end of his speech at the university palace, the Head of State will present the Legion of Honor to his son Daniel Bloch.
Born in Lyon in 1886, from a family of opting Alsatian Jews, Marc Bloch is the author of the reference book on the Battle of France, “The Strange Defeat”. A graduate of history, veteran of the First World War, in 1921 he became professor of history at the Faculty of Strasbourg. He founded, notably with Lucien Febvre, the Annals of Economic and Social History.
Excluded from public service under Pétain, because he was Jewish, he saw his property requisitioned. He was restored to his rights at the University of Strasbourg, which had moved to Clermont-Ferrand. He joined the Resistance in the Lyon region. Arrested in 1944 by the Gestapo, he was imprisoned in Montluc, tortured. He died for France on June 16, 1944, shot alongside twenty-seven other resistance fighters.
Marc Bloch gave his name to the University of Human Sciences of Strasbourg, USHS, merged into Unistra. The aula of the university palace also bears his name, as does the Bischheim high school. As early as 2006, several historians requested the transfer of his ashes to the Pantheon.
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