Musée de la résistance

After our walk to the waterfall we headed towards the Maison du parc, just outside Saint Brisson. There is a small tourist office, but we were there to see the resistance museum that’s located just behind.

It’s set in an old farm house, that’s very reminiscent of the period. It’s a comprehensive museum, with videos, posters, weapons, uniforms and much more, and the text explaining the exhibits is in both French and English, with audio transmitters available in English also. All in all it made for a very interesting visit.

At the start of the war, in 1940, France was split into two, with the southern half (Vichy France) agreeing an armistice with the Nazi party that gave it some form of neutrality and independence, and the northern half being completely occupied by the German army. The Morvan area, where the museum is found, was situated in this occupied zone, and during that time had garrisons of troops occupying buildings and taking control of day-to-day life in the area. The propaganda, being touted by the Nazi party, of being the salvation of the abandoned northern people, was a thinly veiled cover of the true horrors being perpetrated.

‘Trust the German soldiers’ the propaganda read, whilst a massive cleansing of perceived enemies of the Nazis was undertaken across the region.

Innocent people, living normal lives, were taken, processed and finally sent to concentration camps. Claude Noël of Dijon is one face among the millions that were taken from their families.

The true intentions of the Nazi occupation were impossible to hide, and a massive resistance movement began to take shape against them. From a grass roots system of basic non-compliance, to organised military attacks, the Nazi occupation was seriously hindered by the breadth of the resistance, extremely brave and heroic people, working both from within communities, and out of the densely forested areas, that gave perfect cover and were impractical to control.

The Morvan area (shown in red outline) spanned several departments and supplied good forest protection to guerrilla units.

At one point there was over 20 maquis (organised fighting groups) within the forests of the Morvan area, some of which had up to 1200 people. The museum was rich with stories of the people who had made a difference and the historical objects which had been used by them.

The museum is a perfect window into the region’s fight for survival.