French Resistance Fighters Honored on 50th Anniversary of Liberation
President Francois Mitterrand, launching 50th anniversary commemorations of France’s liberation, paid tribute Sunday to young Resistance fighters killed not long before D-Day.
Mitterrand led about 3,000 survivors and relatives of the fallen in a moving ceremony commemorating members of the Maquis--the partisan bands, which took their name from the shrubby Mediterranean flora--who faced German mountain troops and French collaborators in a battle on the snowy Plateau des Glieres in March, 1944.
The fighting was the first major open battle mounted by the Resistance against the occupiers and took place just weeks before the June 6 Allied landings in Normandy.
“It was a tragedy that ended in blood and in horror,” Mitterrand said of the heavy casualties suffered by the Maquisards and locals.
The small cemetery where Mitterrand paid tribute contains the graves of 105 of the 149 partisans killed in the battle. About 900 civilians, accused of backing the Resistance, were deported to German concentration camps.
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