Packing my things to spend the weekend in Belgium, I had a quick look at the website for the Musée de la Libération to try to determine if I would have an issue bringing a large backpack. Since the tickets for all our scheduled outings have been obtained in advance, I thought little of the notice pinned to the home page, explaining that a “social unrest” had prevented the ticket office from opening on the morning of 13 June.

However,  upon our arrival at the entrance, we were met with an employee who seemed reluctant to let us in. They went back and forth between our group and (presumably) their supervisor two or three times to determine if they could allow us to enter. In the end we were granted access and given a time of 12 o’clock to take a self-guided tour of the underground Command Post of Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy of the Forces françaises de l’Intérieur. As it was already close to 11, we moved swiftly through the museum.

Though there was not ample time to linger with the weight of all we were seeing, emotions ran high nonetheless as we read the stories of those involved in the resistance, studied their surviving possessions, uniforms, and letters, and contemplated the ugly realities of the war and the devastation brought to the world by the Nazis.

The armistice signed by France in 1940 that ceded to occupation by the Germans was a crushing blow to Allied morale. Britain, with its impressive navy, was able to withstand the Nazis for the duration of the war. France, sharing a border with Axis-controlled nations as well as Germany itself, suffered heavy casualties attempting to hold her ground. It was as though in a single day, hundreds of years of successful military campaigns by both land and sea were undone: nearly 85 years later to the day, folks are still likely to think of the French as a bunch of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” for their capitulation.

Of course, it was not a total surrender. The site of the museum itself, and the Command Center below it, is evidence of the fierce opposition that burned in the collective heart of the city and the republic as whole.

Shortly before noon we were gathered at the entrance to the Command Post, a bunker around 20m below the museum. Another group exited, winded from climbing the nearly 100 steps back to the surface in 100% humidity. The employee who approached us shortly thereafter was not, unfortunately, there to allow us in, but to show us to the exit. Apologetically, he explained that the “social unrest” — workers on strike to voice their dissent of management decisions– was causing them to have to close the museum.

Before we dispersed for our various free weekend excursions, we continued our discussions on the sidewalk outside as a notice of the closure was taped to the outside door and would-be visitors approached and quickly realized they could not enter. We talked of atrocities past and present, of how the decision is made to sabotage, undermine, and destabilize facists rather than passively hope that keeping one’s head down will mean safety, of the things people did in order to survive the occupation.

In the end, it turned out to be fortuitous that we’d had to move quickly, since it allowed us to cover more ground before having to depart. Though I was disappointed we didn’t get to go underground, I was also kind of ecstatic to have been present for and affected by just about the most French thing ever: a worker’s strike.