Guy Moquet

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Guy Prosper Eustache Môquet (born April 26, 1924 in Paris , † October 22, 1941 in Châteaubriant ) was a French victim of German repression during the occupation of World War II .

biography

Facsimile of a wooden plank handwritten by Guy Môquet from the Châteaubriant camp
Announcement by General Otto von Stülpnagel from October 21, 1941
Communication from Head of State Henri Philippe Pétain dated October 22, 1941

Guy Môquet was born into a working-class family in April 1924, the son of a Paris Communist MP, Prosper Môquet .

Even a member of the communist youth, Môquet was arrested on October 13, 1940 by French police officers at the Gare de l'Est for disseminating communist literature. Although subsequently acquitted, he remained in custody and was transferred to an internment camp in Châteaubriant in May 1941 .

When the German lieutenant colonel Karl Hotz was the victim of an assassination attempt by communists in Nantes on October 20, 1941 , Hitler ordered draconian retaliatory measures. On October 21, 1941, General Otto von Stülpnagel announced the shooting of initially 50 hostages. A further 50 hostages would be executed if the perpetrators had not been caught by October 23, 1941.

“To prevent 50 good French people from being shot”, the French Interior Minister Pierre Pucheu advocated the extradition of prison inmates to the National Socialists and had a list of 61 names drawn up. Of the total of 27 hostages from the Châteaubriant camp, only 17 were on Pucheu's list. Guy Môquet was also taken hostage at the instigation of the German occupiers.

On October 22, 1941, the only 17-year-old Guy Môquet was shot by German soldiers together with 26 other inmates in Châteaubriant. The communists Charles Michels and Jean-Pierre Timbaud were among the victims ; Guy Môquet was the youngest of the victims.

Effective October 22, 1941

This execution, along with others, which took place simultaneously in Nantes and Paris, caused an enormous outrage in the country. The French were particularly shocked by the age of the youngest victim. After a call by General Charles de Gaulle on October 31, 1941, work was suspended for five minutes across France.

In 1944 the writer Louis Aragon dedicated the poem "La rose et le réséda" to Guy Môquet, together with three resistance fighters ( Gabriel Péri , Gilbert Dru, Henri Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves ).

Before the end of World War II, Pierre Pucheu was sentenced to death, among other things, for the events of October 22, 1941. The sentence was carried out on March 20, 1944, after General Charles de Gaulle rejected a pardon from Pucheu.

Today, numerous institutions and streets in France are named after Guy Môquet. A station on the Paris Metro has been named after him since 1946 .

On May 16, 2007, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared that his first official act as President was to ask the Minister of Education to have Guy Môquet's farewell letter to his family read out on October 22 in all secondary schools in the country. The teachers' union SNES-FSU contradicted this “memorial day” set by Sarkozy.

Movie

literature

  • Ernst Jünger: On the hostage question. Description of the cases and their effects . Ed .: Sven Olaf Berggötz. 1st edition. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-608-93938-5 .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Katrin Schmiedekampf: Sarkozy goes to school: teachers boycott farewell letters in class. In: Spiegel Online . October 22, 2007, accessed October 22, 2007 .
  2. ↑ Mask of Compassion . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . October 16, 2011, p. 30 .

Web links

Commons : Guy Môquet  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Moquet, Guy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Môquet, Guy Prosper Eustache (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French victim of German repression during the occupation in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1941
Place of death Châteaubriant , Loire-Atlantique department