The Comet line, so named because of the speed needed to whisk stranded airmen down through occupied France to safety, helped hundreds of allied soldiers and airmen to escape from occupied France.
During the Second World War, resistance movements in the Pyrenees-Orientales helped hundreds of refugees, allied soldiers and airmen to escape from occupied France across the border into Spain.
A simplification of the convoluted military history of the Cote Vermeille
Our own little bit of horror and inhumanity here in the P-O. Never forget lest it happen again.
Symbol of Catalan resistance during WW2, the village of Valmanya on the CD 13 coming from Vinça, was totally destroyed by the Germans in August 1944, not long before the liberation, in reprisal against resistance fighters operating in the area .
Take a walk in Argelès in the footsteps of the Retirada on the ’circuit de la Mémoire’. to mark the 85th anniversary of the opening of the camp on the beach.
The former ‘Maison Mazard’ in Le Soler, now destroyed, was a safe house for Dutch refugees, Jews and resistance members fleeing the nazis in the 1930s.
Elisabeth Eidenbenz was the remarkable Swiss woman who created La Maternité Suisse in Elne as a refuge for expectant mothers exiled from Spain during La Retirada and World War II.
In 1943, when the Gestapo came to Prades , Jean-Michel’s father was fighting with the Resistance and frequently absent.
During World War II the majority of RAF Evaders made their escape or passed through France on their way from Germany and Occupied countries, heading for the coasts in an attempt to return to England.