ČECHOSLOVÁCI VE FRANCOUZSKÉM ODBOJI
CZECHOSLOVAKS IN THE FRENCH RESISTENCE

Summary/Abstract: After the fall of France in June 1940, thousands Czechoslovak soldiers remained in the country. The French authorities refused to demobilize them and interned them in labor camps. At that time, the first Czechoslovak committees comprised of Czechoslovak immigrants, who numbered nearly fifty thousand in France, were established in order to help people, who had no relatives in France and were without documents. Some of them remained in southern unoccupied France working on agricultural farms leased by the Centre d´Aide Tchécoslovaque in Marseille, a Czechoslovak-American organization headed by Donald A. Lowrie of the YMCA. In September 1941, the Committee of Czechoslovak Resistance was established in Paris, formed by representatives of the Sokol gymnastics organizations, the Czechoslovak colony in Paris, and Communists from former International Brigades in Spain. The Committee, which was composed of between 200 and 250 people, started to publish an underground review, organized a fund-raising campaign for the resistance, disseminated propaganda among German soldiers, and assisted prisoners escapes from German labor camps, organized sabotage in war industry and the armed struggle. In the spring months of 1944, two hundred Czechoslovak soldiers dispersed in southern France joined the French partisans – the Maquis. In March 1944, partisan units initiated preparations for an uprising in Paris. On the beginning of the Paris uprising in August 1944, Czechoslovak squads occupied the house of Czechoslovak colony, the consulate and the legation of Czechoslovakia and took participation in the Paris uprising.

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