Monument aux Martyrs de la Résistance - Troyes

In August 1944, the terror spread like wildfire. On August 22 , forty-nine prisoners from Troyes prison, most of them Maquis, were taken from their cells and shot without trial at the Creney-près-Troyes shooting range.

On the 23rd , sixty-eight men, women and children were massacred by the SS at Buchères in reprisal for an attack on a convoy. On the 25th, six men and one woman were shot by the Nazis at La Rivière-de-Corps. On the 27th , thirteen hostages were executed by the Afrika Korps at Montreuil-sur-Barse. On the 28th , twenty-four inhabitants of Mesnil-Saint-Père were in their turn murdered. .. The overwhelming litany of martyrology in the Aube is of course not limited to these places and dates. As a land of resistance , the Aube paid a heavy price for its courage during the Second World War.

Numerous plaques and monuments in and around Troyes keep alive the memory of these atrocities. The most moving of these monuments attempt to give the victims a body and a face.

The monument was intended to be erected on the 10th anniversary of the liberation of Troyes , in 1955. On 13 March, the location was finally chosen: in the Jardin du Rocher , opposite the Fontaine Argence . The inscription chosen was: “Meditate and remember”.

It was in Grau du Roi that sculptor Jean-Charles Lallement carved the two monumental statues from enormous blocks taken from Gallo-Roman quarries in the Gard. Meanwhile, Maurice Veyssière built the imposing 15-metre high wall in Troyes. The resistance fighter was carved from a single 27-ton stone ! The recumbent statue was carved from a 15-ton block.

Willem Vandenameele