Centre Régional de la Résistance et de la Déportation de Castelnau-le-Lez

The Centre Régional de la Résistance et de la Déportation de Castelnau-le-Lez (Castelnau-le-Lez Regional Centre for Resistance and Deportation) is a centre for research and learning on the local history of resistance and deportation in Castelnau-le-Lez. It is intended "to perpetuate the memory of resistance and deportation, especially among young people, and to serve as a pedagogical tool for public knowledge" of resistance and deportation during the Second World War.

The museum presents a permanent public exhibition of photographs, documents, reproductions, films, and historical displays detailing the period from 1939 to 1945 and organized into themes of Occupation, Resistance, Deportation, and Liberation. The museum also contains an archival library of nearly 1100 audiovisual works including literature, archival footage, and recorded interviews with participants and witnesses to resistance and deportation.     

Administered by the national Association des Amis de la Fondation de la Résistance: Mémoire et Espoirs de la Résistance (Friends of the Founding of the Resistance Association: Memory and Hopes of the Resistance), the centre works closely with student and school groups to provide education on local resistance and deportation. It collaborates annually with local schools to assist with the Concours National de la Résistance et de la Déportation (National Competition on Resistance and Deportation), in which students in troisième and older may present individual or group research projects on aspects of resistance and deportation, centered on a yearly theme.    

The building was on April 17, 2014 dedicated to Géneral Véran Cambon de la Valette, who founded the Centre Régional de la Résistance et de la Déportation in 1990. A student at the École de la Garde in Guéret in 1944, he joined the French Resistance following the Normandy Landings; he was captured and interrogated by German authorities in July 1944, and deported first to a camp at Struthof and ultimately to Dachau Concentration Camp. Following the liberation of the camp by French and American forces in April 1945, Cambon de la Valette returned to France where he rejoined the army and received training at the École Supérieur de l'Intendance at Montpellier in 1955. He served as a Captain of Artillery in the colonial forces, and fought in Algeria from 1957 to 1960. He was promoted several times, and completed his career as Directeur Central du Service de l’Intendance au Ministère de la Défense (Adjutant-General of the Ministry of Defence) from 1981 to 1985. He died in 2014.