Route details
Description
Your itinerary
Step 1: Avenue de la République, Crédit Agricole headquarters, Plaque in memory of Maurice SCHUMANN
On June 18, 1940, on the road to exodus, Maurice Schumann (1911-1998), then a journalist, socialist, and volunteer in 1939, heard General de Gaulle's call for Resistance in the Grand Café, today the headquarters of Crédit Agricole. On June 21, he embarked at Saint-Jean-de-Luz and joined de Gaulle in London. He became the spokesperson for Free France on the BBC, in the program Honneur et Patrie. After the war, he had a long political career, a member of the MRP (Popular Republican Movement) then of the Gaullist party under the Fifth Republic, deputy, senator and several times minister.
Step 2: 151 bis rue de Strasbourg, home of André BERNARDEAU, communist resistance fighter
André Bernardeau, a former railway worker who became a clog maker, joined the French Communist Party (PCF) in 1935. In June 1941, he became a member of the PCF leadership triangle in Deux-Sèvres with Roger Guillot and Eugène Gréau. After the sabotage of a telephone cable connection booth in Goise organized by the communist Georges Texereau on December 12, 1941, the French police arrested Bernardeau, René Manen, Eugène Gréau, Pierre Paillas and Roger Guillot on December 20, 1941, transferred them to Paris and handed them over to the Germans. On September 9, 1942, 28 activists appeared before the Gross Paris tribunal which sat at the Hôtel Continental. 17, including André Bernardeau, were sentenced to death. Bernardeau was shot along with 11 other resistance fighters on October 5, 1942 at the Air Ministry shooting range in Paris (XNUMXth arrondissement).
Step 3: Pl. St-Hilaire, arrest of communist resistance fighters Lucien BRUN, Marcel BEGAIX and Carmen MIGAUD
On February 9, 1943, in Place Saint-Hilaire, police officers led by Inspector Bletel of the Political Affairs Section (SAP) of Poitiers arrested three communist resistance fighters, Lucien Brun, a worker, a PCF executive from the Paris region, who had come to Deux-Sèvres to rebuild his organization, and two people from Niort, Marcel Begaix, a municipal employee, and Carmen Migaud, a young communist schoolteacher, suspended by the Vichy administration. Carmen Migaud was released. Lucien Brun was sentenced to death by the military tribunal of the Feldkommandantur of Niort and shot at Chizon de Sainte-Pezenne on April 16, 1943. Marcel Begaix was sentenced to deportation. Classified as Night and Fog, he was interned in several camps, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, Dora where he died on April 12, 1945. His name is inscribed on a commemorative plaque in the lobby of the Town Hall.
Step 4: 6 rue Émile Bèche, plaque in memory of this resistance fighter from the CND network and the Libération – Nord movement
Émile Bèche (1898-1977), teacher, trade unionist, socialist activist, elected deputy in 1936. A member of the Resistance since 1941 within the Confrérie Notre-Dame-Castille (Free France) network, he organized arms drops. Having joined the Libération-Nord movement in February 1943, under the pseudonym of Commander Bourguignon, he became departmental manager for Deux-Sèvres and Poitou. On December 13, 1943, wanted by the Gestapo, he had to flee Niort and go into hiding. His wife and daughter were arrested and imprisoned for three months, and his brother-in-law Marcel Chichéry, a member of the Resistance, died in deportation. He continued his action in Paris, where he had taken refuge, being put in charge of the intelligence service of Libération-Nord by Jean Meunier. A juror at the High Court of Justice during the Pétain trial, he was re-elected as a deputy until 1956. He was mayor of Niort from 1957 to 1971.
Step 5: 2 rue du Palais, Palais de Justice, plaque in memory of Charles BLANCHARD, “Resistance” movement
Charles Blanchard, born on January 31, 1899 in Les Alleuds (Deux-Sèvres), a bailiff in Niort, joined the “Résistance” movement led in Deux-Sèvres by Henry Darsaut. “Résistance” was a movement created around an eponymous Gaullist newspaper printed in Paris, whose first issue was dated October 21, 1942. Blanchard lent his house, located at 6 Place du Pilori in Niort, for clandestine meetings. He had been appointed head of intelligence for the cantons of Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon and Frontenay-Rohan-Rohan. The movement provided false papers to those who refused to join the Compulsory Work Service (STO) and organized escape routes. He was weakened in Deux-Sèvres by a series of arrests made by the Germans on June 19, 1944. Charles Blanchard, deported, died at the Neckargerach camp, Kommando of the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, on November 18, 1944.
Step 6: 5 rue Saint-Gaudens, annex of the prefecture, arrest of Robert BÉCHADE, NAP resistance fighter
Born in 1911 in Ardilleux, senior editor at the Deux-Sèvres prefecture, Robert Béchade was appointed head of the requisitions office in March 1941, then head of the war services in June 1943. Involved in the “Resistance” movement as assistant to Henry Darsaut, he also became departmental head of the NAP (Infiltration of Public Administrations) in March 1943 and regional head for Poitou in September 1943. He was responsible for intelligence, organizing the sabotage of Vichy services and preparing for the Liberation. Arrested on May 6, 1944 in his office on rue Saint-Gaudens by the SAP (Political Affairs Section) of the Poitiers police, tortured in this city without having spoken, deported to the salt mines of Neu-Stassfurt, Buchenwald Kommando, he died at the end of a death march on May 8, 1945. Robert Béchade was appointed sub-prefect of the Republic on March 31, 1945.
Step 7: 6 rue des Cordeliers, assassination of resistance fighter Maurice TOURNERIT by a collaborator on 21/02/1944
In the radio shop of Georges and Jeanne Gibeault, resistance fighters within the Franco-Belgian network Zéro-France, a clandestine meeting is held in which a French agent of the German police, Georges Ledanseur, alias Lambert, has infiltrated. Unmasked, he kills Maurice Tournerit, wounds the Belgian radio operator Jean Hoyoux, before being seriously injured by the other resistance fighters who leave him for dead. He manages to escape, take refuge at the headquarters of the LVF and alert the authorities. Although Jean Hoyoux is treated and saved by doctors Laffitte and Suire, on April 18, 1944, a Sipo-SD roundup decimates Zéro-France and Delbo-Phénix. Georges, deported from Compiègne to Dachau on July 2, 1944, died on September 27, 1944 at the Hersbruck Kommando (KL Flossenbürg); Jeanne, deported from Paris to Ravensbrück on June 30, died there on January 8, 1945. A space, Place du Temple, bears their name.
Step 8: 58 rue Tartifume, plaque at the home of Louis MICHAUD, DELBO-PHÉNIX network
Louis Michaud, known as “Petit Louis,” was employed by the Ponts-et-Chaussées (Bridges and Roads) department in Niort. Along with several colleagues, he joined the resistance in the Franco-Belgian intelligence networks Zéro-France and Delbo. In 1943, repression forced Delbo to transfer his headquarters to Niort, where it became Delbo-Phénix. Radio and air links were established with England (parachute drops, Lysander pick-up operations). In the spring of 1944, these networks were destroyed by German repression. Louis Michaud was arrested on April 16 in Romans, near La Crèche. Taken home, he attempted to escape, but was shot in the leg. He was deported to Buchenwald in the convoy that left Compiègne on August 17, 1944, which also included Delphin Debenest. He survived and took part in the resistance and the liberation of the camp on April 11, 1945.
Step 9: 7 rue de Navailles, internment of Henry DARSAUT, “Resistance” movement
Born in 1910 in Baigts-de-Béarn (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), Henry Darsaut, head of works at the Ponts et Chaussées in Niort, introduced the “Résistance” movement in Deux-Sèvres in October 1942. This movement was characterized by four missions: the distribution of an underground newspaper of the same name of Christian-democrat inspiration, the production of false papers, the provision of an escape route for Allied airmen and aid to persecuted Jews. Surrounded by two deputies recruited at the prefecture (Robert Béchade and Gilbert de Peretti), a steering committee and a principal liaison officer (Clément Giraud), the departmental head Henry Darsaut found supporters mainly in the public services. Arrested on November 13, 1943 by the Gestapo, tortured in Poitiers prison without having spoken, feigning madness to defend himself, he was interned in insane asylums until the Liberation.
Step 10: 262 route d’Aiffres, plaque “To our postal comrades who died for France 1939-1945” on the courtyard side
On this plaque affixed to a wall of the postal depot, eight names of postal workers are engraved, including those of three resistance fighters who died in deportation. Raoul Balliard, employee, agent of the Delbo-Phénix and NAP-PTT network, arrested by the Sipo in Niort on July 27, 1944, deported to Buchenwald with his colleague Paul Giannesini, assigned to the Neu Strassfurt Work Kommando; Raoul Balliard died on May 5, 1945, during the "death march". André Maratrat, employee at the origin of the first version of the Résistance-PTT movement in Niort in March 1941, joined the communist resistance in January 1942; arrested by the French gendarmerie on February 6, 1942, deported to Auschwitz, he died on August 27, 1942. Fernand Pairault, communist postman, arrested on August 23, 1943, deported NN to the Kommando of Güsen II, died in Mauthausen on February 27, 1945. His brother Raoul and his mother Sidonie also died in deportation.