Musée de la Résistance de Châteaubriant

The Musée de la Résistance de Châteaubriant (Châteaubriant Museum of Resistance) is installed within a converted farmhouse located near the former entrance to Choisel Internment Camp (Centre de Séjour Surveillé de Choisel). Initially established in 1940 by the French Third Republic to serve as a prisoner of war camp, it was ultimately employed by the German Army to detain approximately 45 000 French and a small number of British soldiers in the aftermath of the Battle of France. Following the armistice and the creation of the Vichy Regime, prisoners of war were released or deported; operation of the camp was then turned over to local French authorities. From April 1941 until its closure in May 1942, the site was administered as the Centre de Séjour Surveillé de Choisel.

From 1941 to 1942, prisoners included local Romani peoples, common law prisoners, political prisoners, and captured resistance members. Romani groups had faced suspicion and hostility by both local populations and the French government in the period leading up to war, and various groups were prohibited from travelling, moved out of border regions, and interned under police supervision in a series of government orders which authorized detention of suspicious individuals for reasons of national security from 1939 to 1940. The policy of internment was continued under German occupation from 1940 onwards. With the departure of the French prisoners of war, Choisel received Romani groups previously interned at the Camp de la Forge in Moisdon-la-Rivière: 335 individuals were transferred to Châteaubriant between February 27 and March 3, 1941.        

The camp is notable for on October 22, 1941 being the site of execution for 27 hostages, shot as part of a total 48 hostages in retaliation the assassination of German Feldkommandant Karl Hotz, commander of German forces in Loire-Inférieure, in Nantes two days earlier. This was the result of German occupation policy which mandated the mass execution of French prisoners-turned-hostages as retribution for the murder of German occupation forces. The individual names were selected by German General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel from a list of Communist political prisoners provided by the Vichy Minister of the Interior Pierre Puchel; the 27 selected from Châteaubriant were joined by prisoners in Nantes and Paris.   

The museum itself presents the history of the camp and its inhabitants through historical displays which provide detail on the establishment of the camp, the different groups interned there and those groups' relationships to French wartime society and the German and Vichy authorities, and broader themes of resistance and deportation in the region. Collections include artifacts from the camp as well as three donated funds: the writings of François Havard, a former internee; the writings and physical effects of André Bompol, a resistance member and tanker in the First French Army under Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, and a parachute weapons-drop container recovered by resistance member Daniel Jolys.

Near to the museum, a memorial to the 27 hostages commemorates each individually and provides context on their activities; a guided tour is also offered.