Jean Toche – Fragments de mémoire (1930-1944)
Exhibition
From 12 November 2024 to 04 July 2025
From 12/11/2024 to 04/07/2025
Opening hours on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday between 8.30 am and 6 pm. except on January 1st, Easter Monday, Feast of the Ascension, Whit Monday, May 1st, May 8th and December 25th.
Tribute to the graphic designer and illustrator Jean Toche who, as a teenager, experienced the events of the Second World War between Nice and the upper Var valley.
After a career as a teacher and graphic designer, he delivered, during the last years of his life, an unpublished testimony of his youth, mixing texts and drawings and paying tribute to the role played by his brother, Emile, and his parents in the rescue of two Jewish families in 1942-1944.
With the help of the Toche family, this exhibition by the Nice Côte d’Azur Archives department offers to approach the great History through the journey of a teenager from Nice whose illustrated story is punctuated by original archival documents.
The exhibition is not limited to a simple historical reconstruction but offers an immersion in the life of a teenager from Nice, Jean, and his family, who took considerable risks to save Jewish families. The exhibition is thus a tribute to the collective memory through an individual story addressing the context of the Vichy regime, the rise of anti-Semitism and living conditions under the Occupation.
