European Labeling Project for Paths to Freedom: Preserving and Promoting the Memory of WWII Smugglers and Escapees

“There is a sense of urgency to transmit this memory”, that it “emerges at a time when almost all the last witnesses have disappeared”, begins Yoann Rumeau, president of the Routes de la liberté association in the Pyrenees. An intervention scheduled during the conference dedicated to smugglers and escapees in the Hautes-Pyrénées, which was held last weekend in Lourdes. An event organized by the National Office for Combatants and Victims of War.

With his association, he brings together the departmental associations which maintain and promote these memorial paths, with the objective of obtaining the Cultural Route label from the European Council. “This intimate family memory was hidden and concealed for a long time,” he explains. “Those who experienced it, often did not tell their children.”

“There is a challenge in going beyond the local scale,” he continues. “Through the journey of an individual, through these places of memory, we enter into History. It has a Pyrenean dimension, of course, but also European .”

“Promote an innovative and sustainable tourism product”

Associations from Ariège, Pyrénées-Atlantiques and even Catalonia have joined together in the association created in 2022. With the idea “to promote an innovative and sustainable tourism product, which makes an exemplary story accessible to all.” Because beyond their simple marking, he also hopes to see the birth of “today’s poetry, through contemporary creation”.

This labeling of the freedom routes will thus give “citizens and young people the keys to the period of Liberation”, he insists. If the application presented in the spring in Luxembourg was ultimately not accepted, the man who is also president of the Neste-Barousse community of communes hopes that it is only a postponement.

In 2025, he will represent the association’s candidacy. With Europe, these routes illustrate “common values”, values ​​of transmission, hospitality, solidarity, and a common memory.

A journey from Saléchan to Bososst

Shortly before his speech, two other speakers spoke about the need to preserve and continue to honor the memory of these smugglers and escapees, through these paths.

Jacques Simon, in charge of those from Ariège and Haute-Garonne, wants to pay tribute to those who left Saléchan, via the Marignac peak, to reach Bososst, crossing the border on paths that were then dangerous and at night.

A work in progress, with the planned deployment of twelve totems. Around a hundred escapees were received by the man who was then working at the Saléchan station, a village located in a prohibited zone as the last stopover before the border. Of all nationalities, Jewish or not… The smugglers took turns helping people who wanted to escape.

Jeannie Cames, teacher, also worked to bring together numerous testimonies, brought together in two books, with her students. A long-term work, collecting words, analyzing, shaping… From which she hopes that they will learn “the paths to follow at the school of the Republic.”