The Museum of the Resistance and Deportation in Besançon History and Tour
The Museum
The museum is not recommended for children under 10
History Museum: A Tool for Civic Engagement
As a history museum, this is the mission that the Museum of the Resistance and Deportation has embraced since its inception—a mission that is more essential than ever today. It also aims to serve as a tool for civic engagement, placing a strong emphasis on inquiry, knowledge, and history understood as critical thinking.
Thus, beyond the history of World War II, the museum’s narrative addresses timeless issues such as the rise to power of a totalitarian regime, the collapse of a democracy, and the establishment of a system of repression and mass extermination, as well as the Resistance and the commitment to values that transcend the individual.
Museum Map
The Museum's History: Key Dates
Monument to the Executed
Between 1941 and 1944, 98 members of the Resistance of various nationalities were shot by the German army at the citadel. A monument erected after the Liberation pays tribute to them.
The story of each person who was executed is accessible through a digital tool available to the public in the permanent exhibition. The museum continues its research efforts to locate photographs, letters, and personal belongings that belonged to them. By helping to put a face to a name, it honors those who died for France.
The Witness and the Garden of Resurrection
Across from the museum entrance, a new garden named "Resurrection" pays tribute to those deported during World War II.
It is planted with the "Résurrection" rose, a creation by rose breeder Michel Kriloff commissioned by Marcelle Dudach-Roset (1918–1998), a former deportee from the Ravensbrück camp. These roses, which bloom at many memorial sites, symbolize freedom and peace. In the center , the statue of the Witness, created in 1950 by Georges Oudot, invites visitors to explore the museum.
Collections
The museum holds 120,000 items in its collections, including 100,000 archival documents and photographs, 600 posters, 14,000 artifacts, and 600 works of art from the deportation period. These items illustrate the museum’s major themes: the rise of totalitarianism, the collapse of 1940, daily life under the Occupation, the Resistance and repression, internment, deportation, and extermination, followed by the Liberation and Reconstruction, as well as post-war testimonies.
Make a donation to the museum
Since 1971, more than 1,700 donors have entrusted their family archives to the museum. If you have questions about donating documents, objects, or photographs from World War II, please contact us.
Art in Exile
The Art in Deportation collection is on display in two rooms at the end of the permanent exhibition. With over 600 works, this collection is one of the most extensive in Europe. Through a selection of drawings, small paintings, and statuettes created clandestinely by deportees in the Reich’s concentration camps and prisons, discover how these men and women found the strength and courage to create art, despite the ever-present threat of hunger and death. These “modest works” speak to a desire to pass on their story and bear witness, as well as to resist a system designed to crush both body and spirit.
Random Access Memory
Explore more of the museum’s collections on Mémoire vive, the City of Besançon’s digital heritage website.
Temporary exhibition
Exhibition: "
" by Ceija Stokja, "Keep Your Eyes Open"
(On view from February 27 to September 21, 2026
at the Besançon Museum of Fine Arts and the Besançon Museum of the Resistance and Deportation)
Born in Austria into the Lovara Romani community, Ceija Stojka (1933–2013) was a self-taught artist—a writer, painter, and illustrator. A survivor of the Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, where she lived from 1943 to 1945 at the age of 10 to 12, she was one of the first to bear witness to the Nazi genocide of the Roma, more than forty years after the events.
She first published a book, *We Live in Hiding: Stories of a Romani Woman Through the Century*, in 1988. The following year, she began painting, an activity she continued until the final years of her life, creating about a thousand paintings and drawings over the course of 25 years.
Ceija Stojka is an artist who is now internationally renowned, associated with Art Brut, as well as an iconic figure representing the Romani people and their extermination during World War II.
The exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology in Besançon, co-curated with the Museum of the Resistance and Deportation, invites visitors to discover this female artist through an approach that blends art and history, aesthetics and memory. Featuring 113 works, primarily from private collections, the exhibition is divided into three sections, exploring different facets of Ceija Stojka’s work. In the first section, the landscapes reveal her acute sensitivity to nature’s variations across time and seasons. The second section brings together images of deportation to Nazi concentration camps, blending the perspective of the child she once was with that of the adult she became. The third section focuses on the motif of the eye, a recurring and multifaceted theme in Ceija Stojka’s work; this eye is also the one through which she portrays the world of the 1990s and 2000s, an eye deeply imbued with humanity.
In the exhibition halls of the Museum of the Resistance and Deportation, the two documentary films directed by Karin Berger about Ceija Stojka will be shown on a loop:
- Ceija Stojka, 1999, 85 minutes, original version with French subtitles, Navigator Film production.
- Green Grass Under the Boards, 2005, (“Unter den Brettern hellgrünes Gras”), 52 minutes, original version with French subtitles, Navigator Film production
.
Please note:
The exhibition is open during the Citadel’s regular hours.
Lectures related to the temporary exhibition are offered throughout the year. For more information, seethe Citadel’s calendar.
Past Exhibitions
Explore our past temporary exhibitions
Cultural offerings
Educational Program
The museum aims to serve as an educational resource for the citizens of tomorrow. Through its collections, it provides schoolchildren with a solid foundation of knowledge while also encouraging them to reflect on universal themes—both historical and contemporary—such as violence in our societies, responses to intolerance, and learning to live together.
That is why the museum’s educational programs focus primarily on welcoming school groups, from fifth grade through college.
Since 2023, 5,869 students have participated in the museum’s guided tours and workshops. This program offers a two-part exploration of the museum: accompanied by a docent, students tour the various exhibition spaces, and then, during a workshop in the education room, they delve deeper into a specific theme, using facsimiles from the collections, among other resources.
Each year, the museum helps produce the brochure on the annual theme of the National Competition on the Resistance and Deportation, intended for teachers and students. Access the 2025–2026 brochure here: CNRD brochure
Conferences
To further its educational and scientific mission, the museum organizes a free lecture open to the public on the third Thursday of every month from September through June.
Speakers, historians, writers, journalists, professors, archivists, comic book artists, and illustrators are invited to share their work related to the museum’s themes.
Past Conferences
Resource Center
Resource Center
Since the late 1980s, the resource center has been at the heart of the museum’s activities. It houses 12, 000 books available for loan, as well as thousands of newspapers, and provides access to the museum’s extensive archives. As an essential tool for the museum’s daily operations, it also welcomes researchers, students, and members of the public interested in World War II.
The resource center is open by appointment.
Library Catalog
Find all the books available for browsing and borrowing in the BAM catalog.
Newsletter
Check out our quarterly newsletter, “Between the Lines.”
Past newsletters
Contacts
The team at the Museum of the Resistance and Deportation:
- Vincent Briand, Director and Curator
- Aurélie Cousin, Assistant Director and Curator of Collections
- Marie Boley, Outreach Coordinator
- Mathilde Cantenot, Collections Assistant
- Adèle Delaune, stage manager
- Karine Dupoux-Binder, Librarian
- Jeanne Pohren, Outreach Coordinator
Museum Reception
Tel. 03 63 42 58 06
accueilmrdb@citadelle.besancon.fr
Information on donations
Tel. 03 81 87 83 14
transmettre.mrdb@citadelle.besancon.fr
If you have archives, objects, or photographs from World War II and would like to see this heritage preserved and promoted, please contact us.
EducationandOutreach
Tel: 03 81 87 83 17
mediation.mrdb@citadelle.besancon.fr
Discover our educational programs for adult groups and school groups.
Resource Center
Tel: 03 81 61 50 10
documentation.mrdb@citadelle.besancon.fr
Friends of the Museum Association
amis.mrd.besancon@gmail.com
The association helps promote the museum and supports its various projects. Its members enjoy special tours and are actively involved in the museum’s activities.
