François Bédarida

[1] In 1946 he resumed his education and entered the École normale supérieure in Paris and in 1949 graduated in History after a brief stint teaching at the Lycée Thiers in Marseilles.

In 1966 he was appointed head of the Maison Française in Oxford, whose first permanent home he launched and opened in the presence of French Culture Minister, André Malraux.

He was a founder and first director of the Institut d'histoire du temps présent, from 1978 to 1990, and between 1990 and 2000 he held the post of General Secretary of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (ICHS/CIHS).

He thereby locked into the two responsibilities of the historian in relation to that particular period, to perpetuate the role of the Resistance movement, and to establish scientifically the truth about events in order to avoid the creation of myths about that time.

[1] in French: in English: in Spanish: The collected papers of François Bédarida are stored at the Archives nationales, on the site of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, under code 673AP