Reading: Marc Bloch, Dilexit Veritem

To mark the pantheonization of historian Marc Bloch, the Château de Voltaire presents a staged reading of "L'étrange défaite" (The Strange Defeat) by Annick Gambotti, Eric Dalhen, François-Xavier Verger, Françoise Biéler, Roland Rougier and Hervé Le Pivert.

Written between July and September 1940, this work was not to be published, in Marc Bloch’s mind, until France had been liberated from the occupying forces. This happened in 1946, but posthumously, the author having been shot by the Gestapo on June 16, 1944. Considered one of the major books on the causes of the French debacle, “L’Etrange défaite” is also the testament book of a combatant in both wars, a citizen and just as much a historian.
Three qualities that he brought to their highest degree, and which enabled him to write: “We read, when we read, to educate ourselves: which is all very well. But we don’t think enough about the fact that we can, and must, use our culture to help us when we act.”