France Honors Jewish Historian Marc Bloch in Paris Ceremony

France paid tribute yesterday in Paris to the Jewish historian Marc Bloch in a ceremony led by President Emmanuel Macron. Bloch, a French Jewish academic who helped found the Annales school of historiography, is now remembered especially for his wartime courage as a member of the French Resistance. The Nazis captured, tortured and executed him in 1944.

At the military ceremony, caskets for Bloch and his wife, containing the historian’s medals and photographs of the couple, were buried in a mausoleum reserved by law for France’s national heroes. Descendants of the family attended. At the family’s request, Bloch’s remains stayed in the village in central France where he lived for most of his life.

Macron praised Bloch in a speech, saying, “Marc Bloch, who was handed over to the Nazis and murdered, along with his companions, on the evening of June 16, 1944, was portrayed by Vichy propaganda as a terrorist simply because he was Jewish.” He added, “Let us say it clearly. This is where antisemitism inevitably leads once someone embarks on that dark path.” Macron also said Bloch’s greatness was that “he never lost hope for France and the French people.”

Bloch was born in Lyon in 1886 to a Jewish family and grew up in Paris. He volunteered for the French army in 1914 at the start of World War I, was wounded twice, and received the Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre.