After a commemoration of May 8, 1945 on the almost empty Champs-Elysées, Emmanuel Macron paid tribute on Monday to the Resistance and its leader Jean Moulin, in Lyon where several thousand opponents marched under tension, kept at a safe distance by the law enforcement.
The Head of State laid a wreath at the Montluc Prison Memorial in which nearly 10,000 people were imprisoned during the Occupation. More than a thousand of them were shot, 6,000 deported.
“The French Republic is by definition neither good nor bad. It is necessary, vital, just”, he declared, saluting the memory of Jean Moulin, “the child of the Republic”, “the soldier from France”.
He highlighted the mission of the former prefect – “to unite the rights and the lefts” – noting the presence of the main political forces of the country, the CGT or the CFTC, on May 27, 1943, during the meeting founder of the National Council of Resistance. A call for harmony when hostility against him has been strong since the forceps adoption of the pension reform?
To avoid the risk of “casserolades”, recurrent since the promulgation of the text, gatherings had been prohibited around the prison and a vast security perimeter established.
3,000 demonstrators according to the prefecture, 5,000 according to the CGT, marched outside, some banging on pans.
“We are not saying that the current situation is comparable to 1945, we are simply saying that the government cannot trample on the social heritage of the Resistance”, noted Samuel Delor of the CGT du Rhône.
The windows of the door of the town hall of the 3rd arrondissement of Lyon were broken, car windows smashed and CRS repeatedly used tear gas, noted AFP journalists.
“The children of Izieu and the millions of dead of the Second World War deserve silence and respect. Not indignity. There is a time for everything”, tweeted the Keeper of the Seals Éric Dupond-Moretti, present at the ceremony, the president (LR) of the Senate Gérard Larcher judging such gatherings “unacceptable” on this day of memory.
Several hundred meters from the demonstrators, Emmanuel Macron made his visit without incident.
“We would have liked there to be a few more people”, launched the Head of State, Thomas Dossus, environmental senator from the Rhône and the Metropolis of Lyon. “I think that civic spirit would benefit from being widely disseminated (…) Mistakes in tone are never good,” replied Emmanuel Macron.
Accompanied by Claude Bloch, 94, the last survivor of Auschwitz living in Lyon and Nazi criminal hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, the Head of State then visited the cell of Jean Moulin, arrested in Caluire, near Lyon, by local Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie. Horribly tortured, he remained silent and died of injuries sustained on July 8, 1943, on the train taking him to Germany.
Emmanuel Macron also visited the cell of resistance historian Marc Bloch, shot in 1944, in that of Klaus Barbie who spent a week in Montluc in 1983, and in a space devoted to the 44 children of Izieu, rounded up on order of the “butcher of Lyon”. After spending a night in the prison, they were taken to Drancy, from where they were all deported and murdered.
In the morning, the commemorations on the Champs-Elysées were also very supervised by the police.
The Head of State, escorted by the Republican Guard, drove up an almost empty avenue, before meditating at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, rekindling the flame and shaking a few hands in the official gallery.
“We wanted to see the president, we are very disappointed. We don’t really understand why there is all this mess,” lamented Adrien Prevostot, blocked with his daughter 200 meters from the famous avenue. “Military ceremonies are done so that the population is behind the flag. It’s still a shame for France”, added Stanislas, a resident of the district.
In Lyon, the ceremony opens a new memorial cycle which will continue on June 6, 2024 with the commemoration of the Normandy landings and will end on May 8, 2025 for the 80th anniversary of Victory.
Claude Bloch, one of the last survivors of Montluc, wanted to send a message to the younger generation. “I tell them: it happened, it can happen again, it even happens in some countries of the world.”
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08/05/2023 20:38:49 – Lyon (AFP) © 2023 AFP
