Mémorial de la France combattante

(Today's photo and text courtesy of J - thank you!)

Mont-Valérien is the highest point on the hills surrounding Paris.  Its steep slopes are a favourite training place for my bike rides.  In the Middle Ages, it was a place of pilgrimage.  Since the 19th century, the summit of the hill has been the site of a military fortress.
 
During the Second World War, the fortress was used by the Nazi occupiers of Paris as a prison and place of execution for resistance fighters, hostages, communists, and Jewish citizens of occupied France.  Prisoners were held in isolation and without legal representation until they were summoned for a perfunctory trial before a military commission conducted entirely in German.  In the majority of cases, the imprisoned were arrested by collaborating French police.
 
In 1945, the place of execution (an exterior wall of the fortress) was dedicated to  the resistance fighters and hostages shot at Mont-Valérien by Nazi troops during the occupation.  The “hostages” were ordinary citizens of neighbourhoods where the resistance had been active.  In a perverse concept of collective responsibility, people of those neighbourhoods were executed in place of or in addition to actual resistance fighters.
 
Initially it was believed that as many as 4500 people had been shot by firing squads against the wall of the fortress.  That number was a supposition based on statements found in Nazi records when the fort was retaken.  Following decades of research and revision, a national commission has currently identified 1008 named individuals who were executed at the site.  The list omits names of German soldiers, Vichy French police, and persons executed as common criminals.  The status of a few dozen additional names remains under investigation to this day for either addition or deletion from the “official” number.  See Official website of the memorial.
 

In 1960, a massive memorial was created at the execution wall. “Le Mémorial de la France Combattante” is the subject of today’s photograph.