Gendarmes résistants dans l'Ain, le choix de l'impossible” temporary exhibition

The result of extensive research, the exhibition looks at the history of the Ain département during the Second World War, from the original angle of the impact of the Occupation on the daily lives of the département's gendarmes and their involvement in Resistance actions.
A spokesman for Free France, a Gaullist and several times Minister of State, Maurice Schumann said of the gendarmes: ‘They wore the uniform of the French army in the midst of the enemy as a worthy and formidable honour’.
Knowing how to disobey is not easy, and even less so for a gendarme. When should you stop obeying the law when you are a servant of the State?

Descriptions will explain the enslavement of the Gendarmerie under the Occupation, particularly in the Ain, and its impact on the gendarmes. The exhibition invites you to reflect on the notions of loyalty and obedience, in relation to the very identity of the gendarme, and you will discover the biographies of Ain gendarmes who chose to protect the lives of their fellow citizens, often at the cost of their own lives.

These locations give the exhibition a special resonance, as the fort was the scene of fighting between French and German troops during the Battle of the Alps in 1940. The French soldiers continued to hold the position despite the signing of the armistice.

This exhibition, the fruit of the passionate work of the History Commission of the Ain Departmental Gendarmerie Group and the Mémoires de l'Ain 1939-1945 association, is sponsored by Laurent Gerra.