So here he is, this forgotten hero… In this unpublished photo, probably from the late 1930s, Raoul Minot must be nearly 50 years old. He is a handsome man, with white hair and a black suit. His look, imbued with confidence and a certain sweetness, is that of an executive proud of having made a career at Printemps. Hired by the famous Parisian store in 1911 as a handkerchief salesman, he rose through the ranks upon his return from the Great War in 1919, to become deputy head of the “reserves”, the backstage areas where the goods are stored. Printemps Haussmann is his life: his wife, Marthe, also works there as a cashier. They both have a teenage daughter, named Jacqueline. They live in Bécon, a district of Courbevoie, in the western suburbs. A family without history, so to speak ordinary.
You should never trust appearances of this kind. Raoul Minot had the art of deceiving his people. And this identity photo, apparently so banal, marked with staple holes or paper clip marks as if it had lived several lives on various documents, actually refers to an exceptional destiny. Above all, it offers us the essential: a face.
Suddenly, this amateur photographer who remained anonymous for so long, a shadow among the shadows in Paris under German influence in the years 1940-1942, is there looking at us, calling us to be witnesses, and we let ourselves be carried away by our imagination, wandering around, with your little camera, a Kodak Brownie 6/9. From Montmartre to the Saint-Lazare station, from the Champs Elysees to the Concorde or to the nearby western suburbs, he takes one photograph after another, composing a clandestine treasure of some 700 images of everyday life: deserted streets, the flea market, German soldiers walking arm in arm with French women…
The world reported all this in a series of five articles published in August. This investigation, initiated four years earlier from a strange album found at a flea market by a documentary producer passionate about photography, Stéphanie Colaux, allowed Minot to be identified as the author of these forbidden photographs, most of which were dated, numbered and accompanied, on the back, by often ironic comments in the “Fritz”At that time, such audacity on the part of an unaccredited Frenchman could merit the worst sanctions. For him, the man from Bécon, it was deportation.
The last part of the series ended with a paradox: the absence of a photograph of Minot himself. How can we put a face to this name ignored by Resistance specialists? Should we be content with fragments of information taken from his military file, from the archives of Allier, his native department? Let us recall these clues from the identikit: “1.76 million” ; eyes and hair “blacks” ; the face “osseous” ; the forehead “bulky” ; the nose ” broad “. All this dates from his youth, from the time of his heroic period – decorated with the Croix de Guerre – in the army from 1914 to 1918. The man in the small photo, obviously older, has no hair. “blacks” not even the face “osseous”But it is really about him, and this discovery owes much to a reader of the World.
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