On August 28, 1944, after four years of occupation, the Resistance liberated the city of Nice from Nazi barbarity.
The Liberation opened the door, for Nice and for France, to a tremendous period of reconstruction and progress in freedom.
“The people of Nice gave their lives for France,” the Mayor of Nice reminded in his speech during the official ceremony held in the late afternoon at the Monument to the Dead, in the presence of civil and military authorities and representatives of veterans’ associations.
The landing in Provence is a military operation carried out during World War II starting on August 15, 1944, by Allied troops and French armies in the southeast of France. The objective of this operation was to create a new front in France, and the plan also included destroying the German 19th Army present at the time in the southeast of France.
The news of the landing spread through Nice during the day. In retaliation, on the same day, the Nice Gestapo selected 21 resistance fighters from the detainees in the German section of the New Prisons. They added two members of the French Popular Party’s Action Groups to this group. Taken to an isolated wasteland in L’Ariane, they were executed one by one. Today, a commemorative site inaugurated on August 15, 1945, named the Square of the Executed, commemorates these executions.
Provence was liberated in two weeks. Nice, on August 28, 1944.
