Resistance fighter? Jew? Communist? Revisiting the history of the Resistance through the critical lens of testimony

Based on a commentary on a testimony recorded by the Fondation de la mémoire de la déportation (Foundation for the Memory of the Deportation), this article proposes a review of the history of the Resistance in the light of the critique of testimony. It proposes a twofold reflection. The first, on the history of the Resistance, is to re-examine the boundaries of the Resistance, in particular the female Resistance, and its invisibilisation, through the example of a woman whose clandestine actions are difficult to qualify (Resistance fighter? Communist? Jew?). The second reflection, of a methodological nature, concerns oral archives and, more generally, oral history. At a time when the last witnesses to the Second World War are passing away, it invites us to reconsider researchers’ use of oral sources recorded from a heritage preservation rather than a historical perspective, and the way in which we can use sources that are sometimes slightly at odds with our research subject.