Musée de la Résistance Nationale

The Musée de la Résistance Nationale (Museum of National Resistance), based in Champigny-sur-Marne and including 18 other locations throughout metropolitan France, administers a vast collection of objects and artifacts relating to war and resistance in France before, during, and following the Second World War. The collection includes more than 5000 objects and hundreds of thousands of documents acquired through more than 4000 separate donations, for a total of approximately 1 million individual items. These are held in partnership with the Archives Nationales (National Archives). Notable holdings across the total collection include documents and objects relating to:

• Pre-war crises, rising domestic and international tensions, and the buildup to war, including French political debate, the rise of fascism and anti-fascist movements, the Spanish Civil War, and the rise of Nazism and Hitler. 
• Outbreak of war and the Battle for France, including the Drôle de Guerre, German advances, the refugee crisis, armistice, and the demarcation of France. 
• The clandestine press as an early form of resistance to German occupation, which saw the covert printing and distribution of hundreds of different letters, posters, brochures, newspapers, etc. denouncing German occupation and propaganda; the museum holds more than 800 individual examples of printed resistance material. 
• The organization, operation, and evolution of numerous resistance groups throughout France, from 1939 to 1945, including Arc-en-Ciel, Brick, Carmagnole-Liberté, Ceux de la Résistance, Combat, Comité Parisien de la Libération, Conseil Nationale de la Résistance, Forces Unies de la Jeunesse Patriotique, Francs-Tireurs et Partisans Français, Front National de Lutte pour la Libération et l’Indépendance de la France, Front Uni des Résistants de la Préfecture de Police, Mission Union, Mouvement de Libération Nationale, Mouvements Unis de la Résistance, Organisation Civile et Militaire, Organisation Spéciale, Union des Femmes Françaises, and others. 
• Personal archives and documents relating to dozens of individual resistance members. 
• Collaboration in France, within and outside the Vichy Regime, including posters and literature created by Vichy authorities, police records, and records from the creation of the collaborationist newspaper Le Matin.         
• Prisons and internment camps within France and Germany, and locations and logistics of deportation.
• Liberation, and political, economic, and social reconstruction. 
• The creation and operation of veterans' and historical associations, including Amis des Combattants en Espagne Républicaine (Friends of Combattants in Republican Spain), Association des Résistants, Déportés, Internés et Emprisonnés Politiques en Afrique du Nord (Association of Members of the Resistance, Deported and Interned Individuals, and Political Prisoners in North Africa), and local sections of the Association Départementale des Déportés et Internés, Résistants et Patriotes (Departmental Association of Deported and Interned Individuals, Members of the Resistance, and Patriots). 

In Champigny-sur-Marne itself, the museum operates two locations. The Aimé Césaire Building hosts permanent public exhibitions featuring material from the collection, with an emphasis on wartime resistance within France. The Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac Space, opened in 1985 and originally the museum's sole location before the acquisition of the Césaire space, now serves as an archive and a centre for research and conservation of the collection.