Guy Môquet

Guy Môquet (1924 — 22 October 1941) was a French Communist militant. During the German occupation of France during World War II, he was taken hostage by the Nazis and executed by firing squad in retaliation for attacks on Germans by the French Resistance. Môquet came down in history as one of the symbols of the French Resistance.

Biography

Guy Môquet was born to Prosper Môquet, Communist deputy of the XVIIe arrondissement of Paris. He studied at the Lycée Carnot and joined the Communist Youth Movement. Môquet was arrested by the French police as he distributed flyers against Vichy government.

On the 20 October 1941, the commanding officer of the German occupation forces of Loire-Atlantique, Karl Hotz, was assassinated by three communist resistants. Pierre Pucheu, Home minister of the government of Vichy, selected Communist prisoners as hostages for German retaliations, as “not to let 50 good French be shot”.

Guy Môquet was the youngest of the group. He was executed at 4PM. Like his fellow hostages, he cried out “Vive la France” before being shot, and refused to be blindfolded.

Honours

Guy Môquet quickly came down as one of the emblematic heroes of the French resistance and of the Communist Party, partly because of his youth and of a letter he left to his parents. In 1946, a street of Paris and a metro station were renamed in his honour. The town of Châteaubriant, where he was imprisonned, dedicated a lycée to him.

Louis Aragon dedicated the poem La rose et le réséda to Môquet, Gabriel Péri, Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves and Gilbert Dru.

External links

• Guy Moquet's last letter to his family Template:Fr icon
• On the day of his inauguration (May 16, 2007), President Nicolas Sarkozy said that the first act of his presidency would be to ask his Minister of Education that Guy Moquet's last letter be a required reading for all high schoolers in France.