French Resistance fighter Marc Bloch, who was tortured and executed by the Gestapo in 1944, entered the Pantheon on Tuesday, becoming the first historian to receive the honour bestowed on exceptional figures in politics, culture and science. Soldiers carried in two symbolic caskets representing Marc Bloch and his wife Simonne into the former church in the French capital's Latin Quarter. The caskets contained his medals and photographs, as well as letters from her to their children, according to the historian's granddaughter Suzette Bloch. "It's a tremendous recognition," the former AFP journalist said ahead of the ceremony on Tuesday evening at France's secular temple of national memory. President Emmanuel Macron has described the historian of Jewish heritage as a "man of the Enlightenment in the army of the shadows" – a reference to the French Resistance. He is to be honoured for "his work, his teaching and his courage". Bloch's induction carries political significance less than a year before France heads to the polls to elect a successor to Macron, with Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) party eyeing its best chance of seizing power.
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