History

THE AFFICHE ROUGE RESISTANCE FIGHTERS

Paris, February 1944: 23 resistance fighters, most of them foreigners with Communist leanings, are sentenced to death. They include Missak Manouchian, an Armenian group leader; Rayman, a Polish Jew; Epstein, a French resistor; Alfonso, a Spaniard; Fontanot, an Italian; Boczof, a Hungarian. All resisted the Nazi occupation from the very start. 22 go before a firing squad the very same day a woman from Mount Valerien is taken to Germany to be decapitated. Ten days later, their photos stare out from posters plastered in the city´s streets, to denounce what the government calls “an army of crime against France.” It was the famous “Red Poster” that would inspire the poem by Aragon. Our film will tell the story of the battle, fall, and drive to hunt down the resistance group in Paris pictured on the Red Poster, from January to November 1943. Organized in armed groups, in 1943 the resistance fighters carried out several spectacular actions: identifying targets, collecting weapons, acts of sabotage. They did every and anything they could to bring down the Nazi occupiers. The drive to hunt them down was merciless: working under the Paris police, the Intelligence Service Special Brigade Number Two identified and followed the resistance fighters, then arrested and interrogated them before handing them over to the Germans. Unfolding like an investigative documentary, the film offers a historical reconstruction of the hunt for the resistance fighters, mixing judicial and police archives as well as archives from resistance movement members.

Denis Peschanski is a research director at the CNRS (French National Scientific Research Center), author of many titles including “France and the camps. Internment in France 1938-1946”, Paris, Gallimard, 2002 and “Blood of the Foreigner”, Paris, Fayard, 1989.