Mont-Valérien was the main site of execution by the German army on French territory during the Second World War. The men who were shot there, because they were Resistance fighters or hostages, Jews, Communists or foreigners, are all reminders of our history, which naturally makes this site a High Place of National Remembrance.

After the war, General de Gaulle chose the site to honor the memory of those who died for France between 1939 and 1945, and inaugurated the Mémorial de la France combattante on June 18, 1960.

The tour of the Mont-Valérien memorial presents the different histories of the site and the memories it conveys. The “Parcours du Souvenir” (Remembrance Trail) follows the history of the shootings: their arrest, their transfer to Mont-Valérien from the prisons and camps of the Paris region, and their execution in the clearing where some 1,000 men were murdered, marking the chapel, whose walls still bear the scars of graffiti engraved by the condemned, and the clearing where the shootings took place.

Finally, a visit to the Memorial de la France combattante, erected in 1960 on the initiative of General de Gaulle, evokes the theme of the construction of French and European memories of the Second World War.

A visit to the Mont-Valérien memorial provides a better understanding of German repression, French collaboration and the lives of those who “loved life to death”.