Guy Môquet

A 2009 circular to lycées from the Ministry of Education was widely interpreted as meaning that the formal reading of his letter at school was no longer a compulsory part of the curriculum. It called for "teaching time devoted to" bringing pupils and former resistants together, as well as the reading of texts: Guy Môquet's last letter to his family, letters of young condemned men or other texts demonstrating the participation of young people during those dark years in Europe. These readings were "left to the discretion of each [headteacher]". However, on 19 October 2009 the Ministry of Education clarified in the media that the later circular had not been intended to make reading the letter optional. It controversially said that the teaching profession did not have a free hand in teaching what it wanted but were civil servants who must follow directives.

Guy Môquet was portrayed in a short film in French, La lettre ("The letter"), released in 2007, with the title role played by Jean-Baptiste Maunier. Môquet is also one of the principal characters in the 2011 film Calm at Sea, which depicts the events that culminated in the execution of the hostages. Môquet is portrayed by Léo-Paul Salmain.

On 20 October 1941, the commanding officer of the German occupation forces in Loire-Atlantique, Karl Hotz, was assassinated by three communist resisters. Pierre Pucheu, Interior Minister of the government of Marshal Philippe Pétain, chose Communist prisoners to be given as hostages "in order to avoid letting 50 good French people get shot." His selection comprised 18 imprisoned in Nantes, 27 at Châteaubriant, and 5 from Nantes who were imprisoned in Paris.

Guy Môquet was arrested in 1940 distributing propaganda against the war. This policy reversed after resistance appeared as the only way to fight Nazism directly inside France, and after resistance movements started gaining strength (about the same time as Charles de Gaulle's appeal of 18 June 1940). The Communist party offered itself as the leader of French resistance to German occupation and internal French Nazi forces. Môquet was one of those thus celebrated, not least because of his now famous last letter before his execution. This ideal was embraced in France for several decades after the war. The PCF is commonly referred to as the "party of the 75,000 executed people". A street and a Métro station in Paris were named after him in 1946. Many other place names across France also bear his name and Châteaubriant dedicated a high school to him.

Guy Prosper Eustache Môquet (French pronunciation: ​[ɡi pʁɔspɛʁ østaʃ mokɛ], 26 April 1924 – 22 October 1941) was a young French Communist militant. During the German occupation of France in World War II, he was taken hostage by the Nazis and executed by firing squad in Châteaubriant in retaliation for attacks on Germans by the French Resistance; Môquet went down in history as one of its symbols. The farewell letter he wrote to his family at age 17 is now a mandatory reading in all French high schools.

Guy Prosper Eustache Môquet was born on 26 April 1924 in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. He studied at the Lycée Carnot and joined the Communist Youth Movement. After the occupation of Paris by the Germans and the installation of the Vichy government, he was denounced on 13 October 1940 and arrested at the Gare de l'Est metro station by three police officers of the French Anti-Communist Special Brigade. He had with him a poem about three of his arrested comrades, handwritten by him: