Public Pole Execution of Hitler’s Police Chief for the Lidice Massacre

Lisa, June 1942. At exactly 5:00 in the morning, military trucks sealed off the village while it was still wrapped in cold mist. 173 men were separated from their wives and children marched to the field behind the Horak farm and forced to stand in rows of 10. A lieutenant gave a brief command.

 The first volley of gunfire shattered the morning silence. As one group fell, the next was brought forward. The executions continued for 3 hours until not a single man remained standing in that field. At the same time, 203 women were loaded onto trucks and sent to Ravensbrook. 105 children were torn from their mother’s arms amid heartbreaking cries.

Only 17 were selected for Germanization, while most of the others never returned. Houses were set ablaze. Explosives [music] were planted to erase every foundation. Liseay was not merely destroyed. It was deliberately erased from the map as though the village had never existed. It all began with an order signed in Prague by Kurt Dalow, the head of the Nazi order police and the man who assumed direct authority after the assassination of Reinhard Hydrich.

Lydise was not simply an act of revenge. It was chilling proof that when power falls into the hands of men like Dalue, what is called order can become a tool capable of crushing an entire community. Early life and political rise. Kurt Max France Dalue was born on the 15th of September 1897 in Citzburg, Slesia province into a middleclass German family.

 Not much is recorded about his childhood, but everything changed when World War I broke out. At the age of 17, Dalure joined the Prussian army, fighting first on the Eastern Front and later on the Western Front. He was seriously wounded twice, once in the shoulder and once in the head, and was declared 25% disabled.

 In 1918, when the German Empire collapsed, he left the army with the Iron Cross secondass and a deep sense of humiliation shared by a defeated generation. The feeling of betrayal and the loss of a soldier’s honor became an obsession that haunted him for life and became the fertile ground where extremist ideas took root. After the war, Dalu studied civil engineering and worked in Berlin.

 But civilian life could not satisfy a man who had grown used to giving orders. As the country fell into chaos, inflation, unemployment, and protests, he turned to far-right organizations. In 1920, Dalu joined the Fry Corpse, a paramilitary force made up of former soldiers who fought against communists and Poles.

 He quickly stood out during the conflicts in Upper Sicia, commanding a German self-defense unit. There he learned how to control crowds, use violence to impose order, and view people merely as instruments for political goals. This mindset would become the foundation for all his later action. In 1923, Deluge joined the Nazi party, NSDAP.

When Hitler staged the failed coup in Munich, many left, but he stayed. His blind loyalty made him a trusted figure in the eyes of the party leadership. When the Nazi party was relalized in 1926, Daluage commanded the SA forces in Berlin. Under his leadership, these units frequently clashed with communists in the streets.

 Small battles seen as early experiments in the kind of order through fear he would later enforce. In 1928 [music] he was brought into the propaganda apparatus by Joseph Gobles the party leader in Berlin. There Dalu demonstrated absolute loyalty and an iron sense of organization attracting the attention of Hinrich Himmler.

 It was Himmler who advised him to leave the SA and join the SS, a force that was growing faster and more disciplined. That decision shaped Daluage’s path. From a disoriented veteran after the first world war, he entered the most brutal machinery of power of the 20th [music] century, where loyalty was no longer owed to a nation, but to a single man named Adolf Hitler.

 From that moment on, obedience became the ladder that carried him upward, and every rung was built from the fear of others. consolidating power within the SS and the police. After Hitler came to power in 1933, Kurt Dalu quickly became an important link in the new ruling apparatus. He was trusted by Joseph Gobles, the head of the Nazi party in Berlin as a reliable organizing hand.

 Gobles once described Aluge as a soldier who never asks questions. A remark that seemed like praise at first, but later reflected his true nature. Absolute obedience without the need for reason. When the armed forces of Nazi Germany were reorganized, Dalu left the SA and joined the SS Shut Stafle, an organization that Himmler was expanding into a total instrument of control.

 With experience from the Fryore and the SA, he was assigned to command SS units in northern Germany, while Himmler directly oversaw the south. His loyalty, discipline, and ability to maintain order made him the ideal model for the new police apparatus that the Nazi regime sought to build. In June 1934, Hitler ordered the purge of the SA, the paramilitary force that had once helped bring the Nazi party to power, but was now seen as a threat.

Dalue played a key role in protecting the party headquarters in Berlin and assisting the SS in arresting [music] hundreds of SA members loyal to Ernst Rome. After the operation, numerous people were eliminated, including many of his former comrades. Dalue showed no hesitation. He believed that removing the SA was necessary to protect the Furer’s honor, a phrase he would later repeat as his guiding principle.

 Taking the SS’s side at this decisive moment brought him to Hitler’s attention. Just weeks later, he was promoted and personally commended by Himmler. From that moment on, Dalue’s path to power opened wide. He understood that in the Third Reich, power did not belong to those with talent, but to those who knew how to obey.

In 1936, Himmler gained control over the entire German police force, merging both the political police and the uniformed police into the SS. Dalue was appointed chief of the ordinong polyai, abbreviated as OPO. From then on, he commanded the entire uniformed [music] police system across Germany and later in the occupied territories, a force numbering more than 100,000 men.

 With this position, Dalue held authority over everything from city police to border patrol forces. He issued a series of new regulations on political discipline, requiring the police to be absolutely loyal to the Nazi party. From a civil law enforcement body, the OPO quickly became an instrument of repression.

 Tens of thousands of policemen were forced to join the party, hang swastika flags in their offices and attend ideological training courses organized by the SS. In internal speeches, Dalu often emphasized that the police are instruments of the state, not of the people. This statement turned the entire German police force into the foundation of a legalized terror apparatus.

By the late 1,932s, he was regarded as one of the most powerful figures under Himmler’s command. Not as prominent as Hydrich, but Dalu’s influence penetrated every city, every district, and every police officer wearing the SS insignia. As Germany began rearming and preparing to expand its territory, Dalue’s role became even more dangerous.

 He oversaw the reorganization of border police forces and worked with the Vermacht and the SS to control populations in annexed [music] regions such as Austria and Czechoslovakia. The forces under his command were also tasked with eliminating disloyal elements, a dry administrative phrase used to conceal the arrest, deportation, or murder of those considered enemies of the regime.

War crimes and role in Bohemia and Moravia. By September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The ordinance palise forces commanded by Kurt Dalu were deployed immediately after the Vermacht’s advance. Their official mission was to maintain security in the occupied territories, but in reality they became instruments of repression, arrest, and extermination of those deemed enemies of the Reich.

 Under Dalu’s command, about 120,000 uniform policemen were mobilized across Eastern Europe. Many units took part directly in mass executions in Poland and Bellarus. Records preserved in Warsaw note that during the autumn of 1,939, the forces under his control arrested more than 40,000 people, thousands of whom never returned.

 He signed numerous orders demanding the cleansing of residential areas, forcing tens of thousands of families to relocate and directed the establishment of temporary camps, the precursors of later concentration camps. For Himmler, Dalue was the one who carried out the ideal of militarizing the police, turning each occupied region into a zone ruled by discipline and fear.

 In May 1942, after the assassination of Reinhard Hydrich in Prague, Hitler furiously demanded a reprisal severe enough to make all [music] of Europe tremble. Shortly afterward, Dalu was sent to Bohemia and Moravia as deputy protector, replacing Hydrich to take control of the entire territory. Upon his arrival in Prague, he declared, “Retribution will be swift and without limit.

” Those suspected of involvement with the resistance movement were executed on the spot. Czech historian Carol Kaplan recorded that within the first 2 weeks after Dalui took office, more than 1,300 people were executed or disappeared. In Prague, Dalue ordered death notices bearing the headline, “The death sentence has been carried out,” to be posted throughout the city.

 Each notice listed the names of those executed beneath which appeared the cold signature Curt Daluedge, acting protector of Bohemia and Moravia. In this way, he turned justice into an instrument of terror, transforming administrative paperwork into a blade hanging over an entire city. The massacre of Leitzi and Ljaki.

 After the German investigation determined that Hydrickch’s assassins might be hiding in a small village called Liche, Dalu personally signed the order to completely erase the village. At dawn on the 10th of June 1942, his forces surrounded Lydite. 173 men were separated from their families and executed at the Horac farm.

203 women were loaded onto trucks and taken to the [music] Ravensbrook camp. 105 children were divided. Only 17 were selected for Germanization. The rest were sent to the Chelno camp where none returned. Afterwards, soldiers planted explosives and leveled the entire village. A week later, a similar scenario unfolded in Ljaki after the Germans discovered a radio transmitter [music] used by the Czech resistance.

 All adults in the village were executed, the children were taken away and the village was burned to the ground. These two names became symbols of the systematic brutality of the occupation regime and Daluigi’s name was forever tied to both events as an indelible mark. Daluj believed that the checks needed to be disciplined with an iron hand.

 In his speeches in Prague, he often repeated the phrase, “The Germans are not your friends but your teachers.” Under his rule, “Prague became a silent city where no one dared discuss politics or gather in crowds. Along with the repression, he also directed mass expulsions of rural inhabitants in order to Germanize the territory.

 Tens of thousands were removed from their homes, their property confiscated, and their schools placed under German administration. Those deemed unfit were sent to labor camps in Germany. Duage’s rule did not last long, but its consequences became deeply embedded in Czech memory. By the end of 1942, the resistance movement had been nearly crushed.

 Many historians argue that during his brief period in power, Bohemia and Moravia endured one of the darkest and most brutal phases of the entire occupation. Decline, capture, and trial. After 1943, Kurt Dalu began to withdraw from the center of power within the Third Reich. After years of directing the Ordnungpidai and the occupied territories, his health deteriorated severely.

 The SS medical records noted that he suffered an acute myioardial infaction and was ordered to undergo long-term medical treatment. After the illness, he could no longer work in a high pressure environment. Himmler signed the decision granting him retirement and suggested to Hitler that he be rewarded with an estate in Bavaria as a token for his service to the state.

Leaving Prague, Dalu lived reclusively in the countryside. As the war grew increasingly fierce, he chose silence. All public statements and political activities ceased. However, the police apparatus he had built continued to function, still serving the Nazi regime’s oppressive policies in the occupied regions.

 Though no longer directly in command, he remained a symbol of iron discipline and fear within the police ranks. When Berlin fell in May 1945, Daluia attempted to escape. He carried false papers, claimed to be an engineer, and moved between small towns in northern Germany. But only a few days after Germany’s surrender, British forces discovered and arrested him in Lubec.

 In the arrest report, he appeared calm, cooperative, but avoided detailed answers. Investigators soon realized that the tall, silver-haired man with the horse voice was the former commander of the entire German police force. At detention camps in Newster and later Nuremberg, he was interrogated multiple times. His response was always the same.

I only followed orders. When confronted with documents bearing his signature, including orders for executions, deportations, and reprisals in Leiddisi, he said, “I did not give the orders. I only confirmed them.” That justification quickly collapsed when documents from Prague were presented, proving that he not only signed, but also personally directed how each operation was carried out.

 The Czechoslovak government immediately requested his extradition. In November 1945, Dalu was handed over to the Czechoslovak National Court for a separate trial apart from the Nuremberg proceedings. The trial was held in Prague, the city he had once ruled through fear. In court, the prosecutor read the charges, war crimes, crimes against humanity, [music] and direct responsibility for the destruction of the two villages of Leitze and Ljaki.

 Witnesses took the stand one after another, including survivors of the repression and relatives of those who had been executed. They recounted the raids, the burned homes, and the death notices signed Kurt Dalue posted on the walls of Prague. Daluay did not deny his signature. He simply said, “I am a soldier. I followed orders.

” When the prosecutor asked whether he had ever opposed an inhumane command, he lowered his head in silence. At that moment, the courtroom fell completely still. For many, it was not just an admission, but the final proof of blind loyalty that had turned a man into an instrument of atrocity. On October 23rd, 1946, the court sentenced Kurt Duage to death.

 The verdict stated clearly that he had used the police apparatus [music] not to protect human beings but to destroy them. When asked whether he had anything to say before the end, Dalued replied only, “I served Germany to the very end.” It was not a statement of remorse, but the final echo of a man still [music] clinging to obedience as a shield against guilt.

Execution. The next morning, the 24th of October 1946, the courtyard of Pancra Prison in Prague was sealed off early. Guards erected fences [music] around the execution area. A small group consisting of prosecutors, representatives of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Justice, doctors, and a few journalists were allowed to witness.

 This was not merely the execution of one man, but a message from a nation once occupied. Justice had returned. Kurt Deluj was taken from his cell at 7:00 a.m. He wore a simple gray outfit, his hands in cuffs, walking between two guards. His face was gaunt, his eyes cold, revealing no emotion. When asked for any final words, he repeated what he had said many times before.

 I was only following orders. No apology, no sign of remorse. The scaffold at Pancra was not the modern type with a trapdo. It was a vertical pole, a method the Czechoslovak authorities commonly used for war criminals. He was led to the pole, the rope already prepared, one end fixed to a pulley.

 The prison warden read the final verdict, confirming the charges and the order of execution. Everything happened in silence. According to the official record, at 7:45 a.m. the sentence was carried out. Dalu was lifted by a straight pull mechanism, quick and decisive. The military doctor confirmed he was dead only a few minutes later.

 No one clapped. No one cheered. The air was heavy throughout the prison yard. For those who witnessed it, this was not a warning, but the closing of a dark chapter. His body was taken down immediately after and buried in a section [music] reserved for war criminals with no headstone, no trace. The Czechoslovak authorities did not want to leave any symbol that extremists could exploit.

 All documents, clothing, and personal belongings were kept in the national war archives. That morning, Pancra Prison returned to silence. A man who once held power over hundreds of thousands of lives ended his days quietly. For the people of Czechoslovakia, it was not revenge, but a form of belated justice. Justice for Liteete, for Ljaki, and for all those who had fallen under the system he once commanded.

The story of Kurt Dalue ended in the very place where he had once spread fear. But what he left behind did not die with the sentence. Lydis the death notices posted across Prague and the families crushed by the police machine continue to be remembered in court records, history books, and check memory as a warning.

 When power rests in the hands of those who no longer recognize the limits of human decency, history will always pay the price in blood and tears. Moral lessons from history. The execution of Kurt Daluedge is not merely an event buried in the past. It is a heavy warning for every generation that follows.

 The most frightening thing in this story is not the crime itself, but the way crime can gradually be given ordinary names. When a system of power is built upon blind obedience, the line between duty and guilt becomes so thin that people can cross it without realizing they have lost their souls. Looking back, what humanity must remember is not only the sentence handed down to Daluig, but the conditions that allowed a man like him [music] to exist and rise so high.

 Silence, indifference, fear, and the dangerous belief that it has nothing to do with me. History only avoids repeating itself when people are brave enough to ask questions, wise enough to recognize wrongdoing while it is still small, and strong enough to say no before it is too late. The greatest value of justice does not lie in the moment a verdict is delivered, but in its power to awaken the conscience of those who remain.

 For when a society loses the ability to distinguish right from wrong, violence does not need a war to return. It can be reborn through laws, through language, through silence, and through seemingly harmless nods of agreement. History, therefore, exists not only to be remembered. It exists to compel human beings to learn how to choose what it means to be human.

In 1940, in the heart of occupied France, the air felt so heavy that even each breath seemed as though it could be heard. On the streets of Paris, the nailed boots of German soldiers echoed steadily, cold as the movement of a machine without mercy. One careless word, one gesture of shelter for the resistance, even silence at the wrong moment, could make a person disappear from the world.

 Each morning, execution notices appeared again on the walls, dry and merciless as a reminder. France was being ruled not only by bullets, but by fear and enforced silence. In that darkness, thousands of people, [music] from workers, teachers, students, and priests to immigrants who had only just found a place on [music] French soil, chose the path of resistance.

 They believed that a country could be occupied, but its soul could not be taken prisoner. To Nazi Germany, every act of defiance was a thorn that had to be torn out. And their answer was not reason, but rifles, ropes, and military courts wearing the mask of justice. From Paris to Leon, from Tul to Orodor Suglane, the executions of resistance fighters became the familiar rhythm of the machinery of repression.

 Every volley of gunfire, every poster naming the condemned, every act of retaliation was an attempt to crush the will for freedom spreading through the country. But it was precisely within those brutal days that the French came to understand the deeper meaning of the word resistance, not only taking up arms, but preserving dignity when the enemy tried to turn human beings into obedient shadow.

France 1,940. When resistance rose from the ashes, when German forces crossed the Mos River in May 1940, France, once the heart of European civilization, collapsed in only 6 weeks. Paris fell on June 14, and the nation was carved in two by an invisible yet merciless line. The north and west came under direct Nazi occupation while the south remained autonomous under the Vichi regime.

 A government ruled by fear, submission, and collaboration with the enemy. For many French citizens, it was the darkest chapter of modern history. The fall of the republic left a deep wound on the national spirit. Honor was trampled, freedom stripped away, and fear crept into every street, every home. In that suffocating atmosphere, the first sparks of defiance appeared, disorganized, fragile, but unwavering.

The resistance [music] had no single face. It was a mosaic of old soldiers, exiled communists, intellectuals, students, priests, and ordinary workers. Some followed de Gaulle’s call from London. Others fought in the name of justice and human dignity. Despite their different ideologies, they shared one belief.

 France must rise again, even if it meant fighting with bare hands. Early resistance acts were spontaneous, distributing leaflets, spreading secret news, sabotaging railways and communication lines. Over time, organization tightened. Networks of intelligence were formed to supply information to the Allies, hide downed pilots, and coordinate guerilla attacks across the mountains.

Meanwhile, the occupiers responded with an iron fist. Mass arrests, brutal interrogations, and deportation trains bound for the east became part of daily life. To the Nazis, every leaflet, [music] every bullet, every oath of loyalty to France was an act of terrorism to be eradicated. Executions, therefore, were not merely punishments.

 They were psychological weapons, public spectacles of power meant to seow fear. The Nazis understood that one death on display could silence thousands who might otherwise resist. Each execution targeted not only the accused but an entire nation under subjugation. Those who witnessed them, guards, priests, or civilians, carried away a haunting mix of horror and helplessness.

These scenes etched themselves into the occupied country’s memory. A France suffocated between terror and pride. From 1,941 onward, death sentences became political tools. Firing squads no longer worked in secrecy. They became instruments of propaganda. At the same time, the Vichi regime, under the pretext of maintaining order, assisted through hasty trials where resistance members were condemned as traitors on their own soil.

In Paris, Lion, and Tulus, executions were often carried out within days, sometimes mere hours after sentencing. Justice had mutated into a ritual of authority, a calculated performance of fear in which every bullet reinforced the Reich’s domination. Yet, the patriots of France did not yield.

 Each execution fanned the flames of rebellion from underground newspapers like Combat and Frank Tur to the Maki groups hidden in the forests. The spirit of resistance spread like a silent current, unseen but unbroken. They knew the price would be their lives, but they also understood that silence meant the death of the nation’s soul. And at that fragile boundary between fear and courage, Laiston was born as a silent oath.

 It proved that even in the darkest years, human beings still had the right to choose freedom, even when that choice could cost them their lives. The Rich’s court, justice decided [music] before it began. As the resistance movement spread across France, the Nazi occupation machine became more sophisticated and more ruthless.

 Beyond its military power, Germany built a parallel legal system cloaked in the appearance of legitimacy but functioning as a weapon of terror. Under the name Stan, the so-called summary court, legal procedures were reduced to almost nothing, where trials were mere formalities before execution. The sequence was always the same. Arrest, interrogation, accusation, sentencing, and execution, often completed in less than 48 hours.

 These courts rarely allowed defense attorneys, and official records were almost never kept. [music] Some were condemned simply for carrying a leaflet, for sending a letter to the wrong address, or because another prisoner under torture had spoken their name. After sentencing, the prisoners were taken to Fresnes or Lante prisons or to the secret Gestapo sellers in Paris and Leon, where the final question was always the same.

 Who is your commander? Sometimes the answer no longer mattered. The death sentence had already been decided. In most cases, the firing squad German soldiers standing in formation carried out the sentence with military precision. The officer gave the command, “Rifles cracked and silence returned. Everything was organized with cold efficiency, as if death itself had become a ceremony.

” In areas controlled by the Vichi regime, the guillotine was still in use. A relic of justice repurposed to eliminate those labeled as rebels. Whether by bullet or by blade, the meaning was the same. The destruction of the body and the humiliation of the spirit. Executions were often carried out in secluded places, the woods of Vincens’s, the fields near Mont Valeria or deserted lots outside small towns.

 But sometimes that isolation was deliberately broken. Public executions were staged to instill fear. For the Nazis, terror was more effective than any army. Alongside every execution came another weapon, red posters listing the names and crimes of the condemned. The Avis dee execution notices were plastered along the streets from Paris to Ruan.

 Written in both French and German, they spoke in a bureaucratic yet chilling tone. 10 terrorists were executed this morning for [music] acts against the German army. As the war drew to its end, [music] these executions took on an increasingly retaliatory nature. One German officer killed meant 10 French hostages shot. [music] A derailed train meant 50 prisoners executed.

 The rule became a cold formula applied uniformly across occupied France. At Mont Valerion, the fortress that once protected Paris, thousands of resistance fighters were shot between 1941 and 1944. The gunfire that echoed there did not merely end lives. It was used as a warning to an entire nation being suffocated.

 This is the price of defiance. executions of the French resistance during World War II. In the history of occupied France, there were days when the entire nation seemed to hold its breath, not because of bombs or battles, but because of the execution notices posted on city walls. Each sheet of paper was a sentence upon a people, and behind every name lay a story that could never be forgotten.

 One of the first to shock the country was the death of Ge Moque, a 17-year-old boy, the son of a jailed French parliamentarian. In 1941, after a German officer was assassinated in Nant, Hitler ordered mass reprisals. Dozens of French hostages were to be executed. Guy’s name appeared on that list. On the morning of his execution, he wrote a final letter to his parents, a simple note yet filled with an astonishing purity of faith.

I will die along with 26 others. Don’t cry, my dear parents. I love you. I love life. I love France. He walked to the firing line without fear, and even the German soldiers present [music] were said to have bowed their heads in silence. After the war, his letter became a national symbol read aloud in French schools as a timeless reminder of youth and courage in the face of tyranny.

 3 years later, another case shook Paris, the infamous Afish Rouge or red poster. In early 1944, German authorities launched a massive propaganda campaign, plastering city walls with posters showing the faces of 10 men labeled as foreign terrorists. They were members of the FTP MOI resistance group, mostly Jewish, Armenian, Polish, Italian, [music] and Hungarian immigrants.

 Men the Nazis sought to portray as outsiders. At the center of the poster was Misak Manuchian, an Armenian poet who had fled the genocide of 1,915 and found freedom in France. Now he was condemned for crimes against the new order. On the 21st of February 1944 at Monalerian Fortress, Manuian and 21 comrades were brought before a firing squad. His final words were simple.

 To my beloved France, I die without hatred. The gunfire echoed, but it could not silence the strength radiating from those faces on the poster. The people of Paris, instead of recoiling in fear, began leaving flowers beneath the walls where the Afish Rouge was displayed. The propaganda had failed. It had transformed the condemned into heroes.

From that moment on, the so-called foreign criminals became symbols of courage and love for a France that belonged to all who believed in liberty. That same summer in the Veros mountains, the marquee resistance rose up against German occupation. When Nazi forces retaliated with aircraft and armored vehicles, dozens of captured fighters were executed on the spot.

 No trial, no law, only the will of the conqueror. Witnesses later recalled that many sang before falling, and when the gunfire ceased, the villagers could only bow their heads in silence. In those days, Veror was no longer just a mountain, it was a monument to resilience, a place where the French declared that though their bodies could be conquered, their spirit never would.

 From Na and Paris to Veror, those executions were not only the private tragedies of individual lives. They became proof of the final strength of human will. In the midst of a regime that made fear into law, there were still people who chose the light, even when that light had time to flicker only in the final moment of life. Dignity amid the darkness of occupation.

If the executions were a portrait of violence, then the attitude of those condemned was the bright indelible stroke in France’s history. They knew they would not survive. Yet, in the moment of facing death, human dignity was elevated to its highest form. In many eyewitness accounts, people spoke of the almost supernatural calm of the resistance fighters.

 They refused blindfolds, insisting on looking directly at the firing squad. Some sang the national anthem. Others recited poetry. And a few like Minutian managed to smile. They did not walk toward death as victims, but as witnesses of freedom. That posture left an impression no one could forget. The priests who accompanied them later recalled that many Germans in the firing squads appeared shaken, even bowing their heads after the shots.

 Others, especially French collaborators, remained cold and expressionless, as if attending an official ritual. Yet deep down they knew they were losing a part of their own humanity. For the French people, that pain became a collective scar. Each morning, they would see new execution notices posted on the walls lists of so-called terrorists who had just been put to death.

 But those names were no longer anonymous. They were neighbors, teachers, the printers who once slipped leaflets into their hands. As the war neared its end, the weight of those deaths spread even further. Instead of extinguishing the spirit of resistance, they ignited anger and unity. [music] Final letters, secret songs, and stories passed from mouth to mouth became a slow burning fire that led more young people into the ranks of the resistance.

 In 1944, the underground newspaper Combat wrote, “They died so that we could speak. We must speak so that they do not die a second time.” Legacy of the resistance, a memory that never fades. When France was liberated in 1944, the red posters were torn from the walls, but the darkness they left behind did not vanish at once.

 Streets that had witnessed executions gradually became places of remembrance. At Monaleria, Fresnes and Veror, people laid flowers and read the names of the fallen as if to tell them that France still stood because of their sacrifice. After the war, the underground newspapers stepped into the light and were legalized.

 They published lists of the dead, reprinted final letters, and told the stories of individual resistance fighters. In schools, students read the letter of Guim. On the walls of Paris, the Afish Rouge was restored no longer as a propaganda tool of the occupier, but as a symbol of courage. Artists, writers, and poets added their voices to transform those who had once been publicly condemned into national heroes, not only because of their deeds, but because of their dignity.

But victory could not erase the pain. Families of those executed still had to live with an emptiness. nothing could fill. While survivors continued to carry memories that refused to sleep, from those wounds, the spirit of the resistance became part of the new soul of France. It reminds us that freedom is not only a right to enjoy but a responsibility to protect and that justice lives not only in law but also in human memory.

 Today, whenever someone stops before the memorial plaques, they do not bow only before the past. They also stand before questions meant for the present itself. If we had lived in that moment, would we have chosen silence or risen up? If freedom demanded sacrifice, would we have had the courage to defend it to the end? And in the faces on the Aish Rouge, what do we see? The death of the condemned or the quiet pride of a nation that refused to submit.