Emmanuel Macron will chair a ceremony in Lyon on Monday May 8 in tribute to the French Resistance and to Jean Moulin, as the 80th anniversary of his arrest and death approaches.
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On June 21, 1943, Jean Moulin and seven leaders of the Secret Army were arrested in Caluire, near Lyon. They spend the night in Montluc prison, in tiny cells: number 130, on the second floor, for Jean Moulin. “Four square meters, a very high skylight that allows you to see only a small portion of the sky, a toilet for defecating, a pot of water, that’s all that makes up the cells at that time”describes the director of the National Memorial of the Montluc prison, Aurélie Dessert.
Two days later, the head of the Gestapo of Lyon, Klaus Barbie, discovers the true identity of Jacques Martel: Jean Moulin, alias Max. From then on, he took charge of the interrogations himself, earning his nickname of “butcher of Lyon”. “The interrogations are intensifying, including in terms of brutalitysays Aurélie Dessert. We have several testimonies from people who were locked up in Montluc at the same time as him, such as Christian Pineau or Raymond Aubrac, who all described his physical condition, which declined day by day, until he was no longer conscious, almost, at the time of his departure from prison.”
“Jean Moulin, day by day, physically declines [sous la torture] until it’s unrecognizable.”
Aurélie Dessert, Director of the Montluc Memorialat franceinfo
Jean Moulin is transferred to Neuilly. He succumbed to his injuries on a train that took him to Berlin, probably on July 8, at Metz station.
At the Montluc prison, Emmanuel Macron will also go to the cell of Klaus Barbie: the former “butcher of Lyon” spent a night in Montluc after his arrest in 1983. He was sentenced on July 4, 1987 to life imprisonment. and died in prison four years later.
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