"Women in resistance", the new exhibition of the Memorial

The mobilization of women during the war was unprecedented. Yet their place in resistance movements, like the reality of Jewish resistance, have long been ignored. The exhibition proposed by the Memorial with the Casterman editions does them justice. To be seen from March 8 to September 30, 2016.

The publication by Casterman editions of the series of albums dedicated to resistant women during the Second World War, the latest opus of which is devoted to the French resistance fighter Mila Racine, offers the opportunity to pay tribute to the Jewish resistance fighters while welcoming the vitality of the graphic and editorial creation of the historical comic strip.

These women fought against the enemy, both in France and in occupied Europe, the concentration camps and killing centers.

Composed of numerous original archival documents and photographs, about sixty objects and comic strips, this exhibition produced in partnership with Casterman paints a portrait of these women without whom, according to the quote from Henri Rol-Tanguy, «half of our work would have been impossible».

In their vast majority, the resisters have deployed an activity that involves neither clandestinity nor even an apparent break with the expectations linked to their gender. Defense of the values of democracy, rejection of anti-Semitism and xenophobia, willingness to save threatened beings... were the common points of their commitment, itself specific by its precocity, its spontaneity, and its anchorage at the heart of the home.