2 exhibitions not to be missed
History bursts onto the screen
To learn everything about the decisive week of August 19-25, 1944, there is nothing better than visiting the museum’s permanent exhibition, aptly named “On the Liberation of Paris”, on Place Denfert-Rochereau, on the capital’s left bank. In addition, its temporary exhibition this summer is devoted to the film Is Paris burning? which, in 1966, celebrated these very symbolic days. Thanks to numerous documents, in particular audiovisual, we discover the genesis of this blockbuster which is based on the best-selling book by two journalists, Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, released in 1964. The American producer Paul Graetz dreams of equaling The longest day, and the direction is entrusted to René Clément, while an incredible cast brings together the stars of the time: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Claude Rich, Bruno Cremer, Leslie Caron, Simone Signoret, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford…
As for the storyline – written by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola! – it’s a headache: “Twenty years after the events, the witnesses are still present and concerned about their image,” explain the exhibition curators. The documents show how complicated it was to present a suspenseful and entertaining version, while remaining close to historical reality. If René Clément inserts archive images, he also makes many compromises. Thus, while the book accuses the communists of wanting to take advantage of the Liberation to seize power – a contested theory – the film tones down the message. But it takes up the false idea that Dietrich von Choltitz, the brutal military governor of Paris, would have voluntarily spared the capital from the fire ordered by Hitler… This journey shows how the memory of an event is reshaped over the decades, through our readings and the cinema. The Liberation as we imagine it today is different from the one shown in 1966.
In the shadow of the army of shadows
Smiling or serious, bathed in studio light or slightly blurred in an amateur snapshot, fifty-six women emerge from the shadows and look at us. Fifty-six resistance fighters, most of them unknown, exhibited on a wall of the Museum of the Order of the Liberation in Paris. “There are thousands of French women who fought against the Occupation,” explains Vladimir Trouplin, curator of the museum. “We realized, while putting together this exhibition, that the Resistance was a parity movement. But in the national memory, the resistance fighters have remained invisible. Thus, out of 1,038 people distinguished as Companions of the Liberation by General de Gaulle, six were women!”
This exhibition aims to do them justice by tracing the roots of their commitment. It deciphers the reasons for their choice, perceived as a “major transgression of the established order, by the Germans and Vichy, but also by a society that was still very patriarchal,” adds Catherine Lacour-Astol, scientific curator. Moving objects are placed alongside the subject: the double-walled bag of Lise London, head of the women’s committees of Paris Sud; detailed identity cards of hidden Jewish children, drawn up by the hand of Gilberte Nissim-Steg, responsible for their rescue within the Éclaireurs israélites de France; the silk handkerchief of Brigitte Friang, an agent of the Air Operations Office, bearing encrypted codes to London… Like their male alter egos, the resistance fighters are recruited from all backgrounds and at all ages. And no task is foreign to them, from the production of false papers to the role of liaison agent, to the supply of the maquis. “On the other hand,” notes Catherine Lacour-Astol, “very few have handled weapons.
The battlefields remained the preserve of men.” The tour ends with a tribute to those who suffered the horror of Nazi repression. In the Ravensbrück camp, near Berlin (Germany), where the majority of deportees were sent, Germaine Tillion wrote an operetta, others drew, embroidered… This time, a way of resisting dehumanization.
