"La victoire en pleurant. Alias Caracalla 1943-1946"

Daniel Cordier (1920-2020) had several lives: gallery owner, collector, globetrotter, historian, volunteer in General de Gaulle's Free France, secretary to Jean Moulin in the Resistance. The publication of his memoirs has aroused the sympathy and emotion of the public discovering the career of this "soldier of freedom", as he liked to define himself. The readers of Alias Caracalla will find in La Victoire en pleurant, the second volume of his memoirs covering the years 1943-1946, the same fighter in love with ideals and sacrifice, the same candid but scrupulous witness to history, the same sensitive young man eager for art and culture, the same shy man too proud not to suffer from his weaknesses, the same faithful friend multiplying meetings with exceptional people, such as Jean-Paul Sartre or Albert Camus. Between his second escape from France and his participation in the preparation of the Normandy landings, he will also make, following the advice of Jean Moulin, a discovery that will once again change his life: the Prado Museum in Madrid...

This conference proposes to retrace in images the moving and astonishing journey of the young Daniel Cordier who, when questioned about the risks taken and the dangers incurred, answered: "I did not commit any other feat than to remain free".

A doctor of history from Sciences Po Paris, Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon is a specialist in the history of World War II in France and has published some fifteen books, including a biography of Pétain (Perrin, 2014) and a biography of Jean Moulin (Flammarion, 2018). She worked for ten years with Daniel Cordier on his monumental biography of Jean Moulin (L'Inconnu du Panthéon and La République des catacombes). She is the editor of La Victoire en pleurant, the sequel to Alias Caracalla published after the death of Daniel Cordier in the Collection Témoins of Gallimard.