French Riviera FRN


Liberation Day, The 70th anniversary of the Liberation of Nice from the Nazi’s is a celebration of France’s finest wartime hour - Also the liberation of Paris from Nazi occupation 70 years ago, which revived national pride after the humiliation of defeat and the shame of collaboration. On Monday night Parisians will dance in the square outside the Hotel de Ville, the City Hall, where, on August 25, 1944, Charles de Gaulle told a jubilant crowd that Paris had “stood up to liberate itself”. His triumphant speech made only a passing mention of the role of Allied forces, who still had long months of fighting ahead elsewhere in France before the German occupation was ended. The weeklong celebrations have focused mainly on the part played by French civilians and fighters, 1,600 of who died in the 10-day popular uprising in Paris launched by police officers on August 15, 1944. The exception was a parade on Saturday by French and American forces to mark the entry into the capital of the French 2nd Armoured Division and the 4th US Infantry Division. There was little mention of the deportation to the Buchenwald concentration camp of more than 2,500 “political prisoners” from a suburb of the capital on the day the uprising began, and even less of the arrests of nine Jews by Paris police only four days earlier. “The French government has made the Liberation of Paris a purely French celebration,” two young French commentators, Fabrice d’Almeida and Sophie Roche, wrote in the Huffington Post.


Size: 5035px × 7752px
Location: French Riviera Nice
Photo credit: © Rik Hamilton / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
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