Groupe_du_musée_de_l'Homme
Groupe du musée de l'Homme
Movement of the French Resistance to the German occupation
The Groupe du musée de l'Homme (French for 'Group of the Museum of Man') was a movement in the French resistance to the German occupation during the Second World War.
In July 1940, after the Appeal of 18 June from Charles de Gaulle, a resistance group was created by intellectuals and academics led by Anatole Lewitsky and Boris Vildé, along with Paul Hauet. They were not Gaullists; since they were prisoners of war (Vildé escaped on 5 July and Lewitsky was freed in August), it is highly improbable that they had heard de Gaulle's broadcast. However, once Gaullist propaganda took hold, with its message of escape from dishonour, the group fell in with it. Germaine Tillion said, "I do not remember from what date we started to call ourselves Gaullists: it was not at the beginning at any rate. But we did consider General de Gaulle to be right, or at least to be a man who thought as we did. But we knew nothing about him".[1] They were joined by other groups in September. Raymond Burgard, René Iché, Claude Aveline, Marcel Abraham, Jean Cassou (who launched the newspaper Résistance), René-Yves Creston, Germaine Tillion and her mother, Émilie Tillion, were also part of the network.
To prevent their meetings from attracting the attention of the Germans and the French police, they set up a "literary society", Les amis d'Alain-Fournier (The Friends of Alain-Fournier).