As part of the History-Geography program for the 3rd class, the teachers of the discipline at the Pierre Mendès-France school complex, Maryse Seguin and Carole Giroflier, organized an educational outing to Tarbes; on the program two parts, a show “Lizel, Elise, beyond the rubble” and at the Museum of Deportation and Resistance, the meeting with Elise Bouthors. Pages of French history through two views, two commitments, Marion Lo Monaco and Elise Bouthors, daughter of a German resistance fighter exiled to Tarbes in 1934. Testimonies integrated by schoolchildren who are made a restitution.

* Words of students. “We attended the performance of Marion Lo Monaco, author and one and only performer of the show” Lizel, Elise, beyond the rubble “. She staged the life of Elise Bouthors, a refugee in Tarbes where she had a started a new life with his parents and his little sister who was born a few years later after their installation in Bigorre. Then the war broke out “. Students will express surprise when they discover that “all the characters were played by the same person, yet each was easy to tell apart, with details, like Lizel’s baby boy who was always with her”. A single decor, simple, two chairs and a table, lights and sound backgrounds as if we were turning on the radio: “quickly immersed in the show, we were able to feel the emotions that Lizel as a child may have experienced: incomprehension, cheerfulness, sadness or fear. Marion Lo Monaco carried with force this testimony so precious and moving “.

* Discussions with Elise Bouthors.

At the Deportation Museum, with Sandrine Espouey, museum librarian, discovery of numerous documents (photos, letters), objects linked to the Second World War as well as representations of concentration camps. “We felt admiration for all those who fought and resisted for France. This visit allows us to better understand the historical context evoked in the show”. And then, meeting with Elise Bouthors who “shared her story face to face in a very moving and enriching story”. Mixed feelings “of compassion for her, her family but also for the other families met in prison in Toulouse and who were deported”. Testimony and lesson in life: from the living conditions at that time to the “warning about our choices while remaining vigilant, so that history does not repeat itself”.