Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Musée de la Résistance Georges Perraudin, located in the former Guet hotel in Saint-Honoré-les-Bains (Nièvre), was founded in 1991 by Norbert Jault and his wife Luce Perraudin. This documentation centre houses thousands of authentic archives of the Second World War, collected as early as adolescence by Norbert Jault, despite the risks involved. The hotel, built in the 1930s, was in turn a military hospital, resistance headquarters, and a place of struggle against the STO, before becoming a tribute to Georges Perraudin, a local resistant.

Georges Perraudin (1896–?), vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce of the Nièvre and hero of the First World War, played a key role in the Nivernais Resistance. He saved twice Saint-Honoré-les-Bains from German reprisals and received a SHAEF certificate (No.884) for his heroic conduct during the Allied landing. The museum exhibits its personal objects, archives of the maquis Louis (directed by Paul Sarrette), as well as magazines, posters, weapons and testimonies of the occupation.

The museum's fonds includes exceptional gifts, such as the archives of the maquis Louis (transmitted by the Mackenzie, Berthin and Sarrette families) or a bust of Claude Dellys, an aviator-resistant, offered in 2012 by artist Alain Valtat. Although temporarily closed, the museum remains a major place of memory, cited in the Petit Futé 2024-2025 among the memorial sites of the French Resistance.

The hotel of the Guet, symbol of the local resistance, was also the setting of ceremonies of the maquis Louis. A bag of dried flowers from the 1919 Victoire parade, collected by Perraudin, is sealed in the monument to the dead of the city. The museum thus illustrates the commitment of the Morvandials, between collective memory and family heritage, through rare objects such as parachutes, uniforms or rations.

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