78th anniversary of the Liberation of Toulouse: guided tour of the secret places of the Resistance
Every August 19 for 20 years, Elérika Leroy, historian of the Museum of Resistance and Deportation in Toulouse, organizes a visit in the footsteps of the Liberation and the shadow army.
Historian of the Departmental Museum of Resistance and Deportation in Toulouse, independent researcher passionate about the Resistance, Elérika Leroy has led, every August 19 for twenty years and several times a year, a visit to the emblematic places of the Liberation.
The guided tour lasts about two hours and requires the listener to quickly have the opportunity to dive into the Toulouse of the German Occupation, where in each street, the little story joins the big one. Extracts.
“The Liberation is above all the Resistance”
“To evoke the Liberation, explains Elérika Leroy, is to evoke the Resistance, these women and these men who had fought before, during the two years of German Occupation. People have in mind the fighting in Toulouse, but it was actually clashes with German troops who had been leaving the city since August 17, 1944.
First emblematic place, a street plaque in Metz in memory.
“This is where the headquarters of the Resistance in Toulouse was located, at the Maison de la mutualité, the socialist resistance around Raymond Naves, arrested, tortured and deported to Auschwitz”. Direction rue d’Alsace-Lorraine. “It was the first demonstration of the Resistance, spontaneous, on November 5, 1940, with an 18-year-old young girl from the Communist youth, Angèle Del Rio Bettini, of Spanish origin. With his comrades, these young rebels wish to demonstrate against the official arrival of Marshal Pétain in the unoccupied zone. »
Rue de la Pomme, Marie-Louise Dissard’s store.
“This is where this store of women’s frivolities of Marie-Louis Dissard, alias Victoire or Françoise, was presented. This explains to people the essential role of Toulouse for four years, around escape networks, the passage through the Pyrenees, and this incredible woman, Françoise, in connection with the Hotel de Paris (current Crown Plaza ), which will organize these sectors.
At 11, rue de la Pomme.
“I am talking about a great lady completely forgotten in Toulouse, Ariane Scriabine Fiksman, a resistance fighter of Russian origin who was killed by the militia there on July 24, 1944, where she had rented an apartment. The city was the seat of the Jewish army, because a resistance was organized. »
Weapons in cemeteries.
“It started in 1942. We were stealing weapons from the French armistice army. There is the figure of Captain Louis Pélissier who camouflaged weapons in cemeteries, garages, in the Pêcheur companies at 96, avenue de Lespinet…”