Holocaust Memorials - Monuments, Museums and Institutions in Commemoration of Nazi Victims

in detail

Between 1940 and 1944 German occupation troops executed approximately 100 resistance fighters from the Franche-Comté region in the Besançon citadel.

After World War II the city of Besançon decided to use the citadel that was no longer militarily useful for tourism. The Resistance and Deportation Museum was finally established in 1971. The initiative came from the Union of Resistance Fighters and Deportees from the Franche-Comté region.

With photographs, texts and original documents presented in twenty exhibition rooms and covering two levels, the museum, which is by no means limited to regional history, addresses the central themes of World War II: National Socialism and its development, the war and the Vichy Regime, resistance in the Franche-Comté region, in France and all of Europe, and the liberation. The exhibition places special emphasis on the important topics of the deportations and the “Final Solution.” On the third level paintings, drawings and sculptures that were created in the concentration camps are on display. In the “Courtyard of the Executed“ visitors can see the execution poles and the statue titled “the Witness“ created by the sculptor Oudot. It was erected in commemoration of the resistance fighters of the region that were executed here.