This year, 2024, marks the 79th anniversary of VE Day, the formal acceptance of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies.
The Spanish republican soldiers of the 9th company in General Leclerc’s 2nd Armoured Division fought Nazism on the side of the Allies
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 .
If he had not left behind him a few drawings of his horrific stay in the French concentration camps, Civil War refugee Josep Bartoli (1910-1995) would have remained just another anonymous fighter amongst thousands who sacrificed their lives in the name of freedom. Visit the exhibition at the Memorial de Rivesaltes
Michel Torrent (code name Milor René Jules) fled Saint Malo under German occupation and found refuge for himself and his family with his grandparents in Perpignan.
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.
A “Lest we Forget” drive around the Pyrenees Orientales can be the moment to visit or revisit some of the villages and enjoy the autumn colours whilst taking in some of the fascinating War and anti war Memorials.
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.