Jean Moulin
The unifier of the French Resistance was held here before dying under torture.
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A military prison of 1921 in eastern Lyon, used by the Gestapo between 1943 and 1944 to hold resistance members, Jews and hostages, and turned into a national memorial in 2010. About ten thousand people passed through the prison in that year and a half. Many were executed or deported to the extermination camps. Among those held were Jean Moulin — who unified the French Resistance — held here before dying under torture, and the forty-four children of Izieu, deported to Auschwitz, none of whom returned. It was run by Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo officer known as the Butcher of Lyon, tried in this same city in 1987 for crimes against humanity. The place is preserved as it was: the cells, the yard and the interrogation rooms. Entry is free, and the visit is emotionally heavy and not suitable for small children.
The unifier of the French Resistance was held here before dying under torture.
Forty-four children deported to Auschwitz; none returned.
The cells, yard and interrogation rooms untouched.
Eastern Lyon, the Guillotière district
A Gestapo officer who headed its Lyon office between 1942 and 1944, responsible for the torture, execution and deportation of thousands. After the war American intelligence recruited him and then helped him escape to Bolivia, where he lived for decades under an assumed name. He was extradited to France in 1983 and tried in Lyon in 1987 — the first trial in France for crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to life and died in prison in 1991.
The Centre for the History of the Resistance and Deportation, housed in the building that was the Gestapo's own Lyon headquarters — the city's main museum on the subject, ticketed, with displays and filmed testimony. And the Maison d'Izieu about an hour to the east, today a memorial museum. Lyon was called the capital of the Resistance because most of its major movements formed or met there.
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