who is this historian and resistance fighter killed by the Nazis?

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Emmanuel Macron announced this Saturday, November 23, 2024 in Strasbourg that the historian and resistance fighter Marc Bloch, “the man of the Enlightenment in the army of shadows”, assassinated by the Gestapo in 1944, 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 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Strasbourg, November 23, 1944.

Marc Bloch was a committed citizen, soldier of the two world wars, patriot, anti-fascist, fervent republican and resistance fighter, killed in 1944 by the Nazis.

“A History that explores the depths of society”

But he was also 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 economy.

Before that, he was a teacher in 1912 in Montpellier before leaving and returning in 1940 to give courses at the faculty. An elementary school in the town also bears his name.

In 1929, he notably founded with Lucien Febvre the journal “Annals of Economic and Social History”, with worldwide academic resonance.

Its pioneering methods allow a new approach, with “a History that is interested in the depths of society” and captures man in all his aspects. With in particular his master book The miracle-working kings (1924), he gives “history another object than the great names, the great events, the battles” summarizes for l'AFP the historian Julien Théry.

“Stinging lucidity which still strikes us today”

Captain and Croix de Guerre in 1914-1918, mobilized again in 1939, Marc Bloch analyzed implacably in The Strange Defeat the French debacle faced with the German offensive in May-June 1940. His best-known work, published posthumously after the war and recounting from the inside, in an implacable manner, “the most atrocious collapse in our history”.

A story “for generations to come”, underlined Emmanuel Macron, evoking the “French will blunted by conservatism, asleep by conformism, softened by bureaucracy, so neglected by part of its elites”. “Stinging lucidity which still strikes us today,” he added.

Hairy at 53, resistant until his death

Passionate about the Republic” and a great patriot who signed the manifesto of anti-fascist intellectuals in the 1930s, this atheist Jew, Poilu of the 14/18 war, was mobilized again in 1939. At his request, when he was 53 years old, six children and suffers from debilitating polyarthritis. “I am the oldest captain in the French army”, he said.

His family is Jewish, non-practicing. “Marc Bloch only had faith in one idea, the Republic,” emphasizes l'AFP his granddaughter, Suzette Bloch. He said that he only claimed his Jewishness “in one case: in front of an anti-Semite”.

In 1940, with the anti-Jewish laws of Vichy, he was excluded from teaching before being temporarily reinstated. It was over when the Germans invaded the free zone in November 1942. With his family, he took refuge in the family home in Creuse before once again choosing the France he loved so much.

France, from which some would conspire to expel me (…) will remain, whatever happens, the homeland from which I cannot uproot my heart.

He teaches history in prison

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. In captivity, he becomes a teacher again and instructs his comrades in misfortune. “If I escape, I will resume my classes,” he confided to them.

He was shot “with a machine gun in the back” on June 16 with 29 of his comrades.

The absence of the extreme right from the demanded pantheonization

The family of Marc Bloch welcomed his pantheonization, 80 years after his death, for which political leaders and historians had long called. “It’s a great emotion and pride. He gave himself body and soul for freedom and against Nazism,” his granddaughter Suzette Bloch told l'AFP.

In a letter to the President of the Republic, including l'AFP obtained a copy, the family requests, in view of its commitment, that “the extreme right, in all its forms, be excluded from any participation in the ceremony” of entry into the Pantheon.

“The work of this convinced patriot is profoundly anti-nationalist, built 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 rights holders.

“Purely civil” tribute

On February 19, the presence of Marine Le Pen at the pantheonization of Missak Manouchian, against the advice of her descendants and the president, caused controversy. A few days earlier, however, she had given up on going to the national tribute to Robert Badinter.

The family also wants the tribute to be “purely civil”, as Marc Bloch requested in his will.

Since 2017, Emmanuel Macron has already pantheonized the writer Maurice Genevoix, the French and European political figure Simone Veil, the music hall star Joséphine Baker and the communist resistance fighter of Armenian origin Missak Manouchian.

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, it was specified in the presidential entourage.

Source AFP

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