Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation

The Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation (Centre for History of Resistance and Deportation) in Lyon is a museum and a centre for research and study on resistance and deportation in the city during the Second World War.

The Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation is located within the premises of a former French military school for the training of army medical staff, the École du Service de Santé Militaire de Lyon, founded in 1888. Following the German occupation of Vichy in November 1942, the school was occupied by Lyon Gestapo Chief Klaus Barbie. Remembered as “The Butcher of Lyon,” Barbie tortured numerous prisoners and resistance members there, including Jean Moulin. On May 26, 1944, an Allied bombing raid partially destroyed the school buildings. The school was reopened in 1945, and Lyon remains the location of its successor, the École du Service de Santé des Armées de Lyon-Bron, now at a new location. The original school buildings, repaired, were inaugurated as a museum on October 15, 1992. A part of the museum collections was transferred from an earlier exhibition on local resistance and deportation, located at Lyon’s Natural History Museum and established in 1965.

The museum’s permanent exhibition, Lyon Dans La Guerre, 1939-1945 (‘Lyon At War, 1939-1945’) presents the city’s wartime experiences: military and political perspectives, daily civilian life under occupation, resistance, deportation, and liberation. The exhibition includes period photography and media, military and civilian objects, and recorded testimonies from Lyonnais who experienced occupation, resistance, and deportation. In addition to this, the museum screens portions of the documentary ‘Le Procès Barbie’ (The Barbie Process), which relates Barbie’s wartime crimes, offers extensive witness testimony, and discusses Barbie’s ultimate capture and trial by French authorities for crimes against humanity in 1987.