French Resistance - Cultural Personalities

Cultural Personalities

The well-known personalities of France - intellectuals, artists, and entertainers - faced a serious dilemma in choosing to emigrate or to remain in France during the country's occupation. They understood that their post-war reputations would depend, in large part, on their conduct during the war years. Most who remained in France aimed to defend and further French culture and thereby weaken the German hold on occupied France. Some were later ostracized following accusations that they had collaborated. Among those who actively fought in the Resistance, a number died for it - for instance the writer Jean Prévost, the philosopher and mathematician Jean Cavaillès, the historian Marc Bloch, and the philosopher Jean Gosset; among those who survived and went on to reflect on their experience, a particularly visible one was André Malraux.

Among prominent foreign figures who participated in the French Résistance was the political scientist and later Iranian Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar. His antitotalitarian efforts took him back to Paris in 1980 as head of Iranian opposition groups against the then-established Islamic government. He was assassinated on order of the Iranian Islamic Republic in 1991.