Book | Exhibition | Film | Memorial | Mausoleum | Media
Between 1940 and 1948, some 4,000 Vietnamese people passed through the Bergerac powder factory in Dordogne. Since January 2023, I have been working on a very ambitious project to revive their history and honor their memory. Conducted in partnership with Michel Lecat (see video), it has four components: a book, an exhibition, a film and a memorial. The first achievements of the project began in the summer of 2025 with the opening of the exhibition.
This project is supported by the Aquitaine region, the Occitanie region, the Dordogne department, the Bergerac urban community (CAB) and the city of Bergerac.
Book
Published by Élytis editions in Bordeaux, this 300-page book gives an important place to iconography, thanks to the exceptional photographic collection that Michel Lecat inherited from his maternal grandfather, Robert Bondier, who photographed life in Bergerac for half a century. Also presented are very rare photos from family albums of families of former Indochinese Workers.
As for the text, it is the result of a work of examining some 10,000 pages of archives that I collected at the Departmental Archives of Dordogne, at the National Archives of France Overseas in Aix-en-Provence (ANOM), and at the Diplomatic Archives in La Courneuve. The ANOM archives have long been considered lost. This book is the first to use them.
The book will be published on January 23, 2026 by Elytis editions in Bordeaux. It is possible to pre-order the book from the publisher, and receive it before Christmas.
The book has six chapters: Arrival in Bergerac, life in the camp, Operation Vallée des Beunes, Resistance and Liberation, mobilizations from 1944 to 1948, expulsion and repatriation.
Exhibition
The Bondier-Lecat photographic collection has a thousand negatives concerning these strange « Annamites » who landed in Bergerac during the Second World War. About sixty photos, selected from the best of this collection, but also from other public or private collections, make up a basic exhibition intended to circulate throughout the Nouvelle Aquitaine region, and beyond. In each location, this basic exhibition is supplemented by original archival documents, a video space and various objects.
The exhibition was launched at the Pôle d’interprétation de la préhistoire (PIP) des Eyzies on Friday, May 16, 2025, where it remained throughout the summer. It is currently continuing its tour in Bergerac (from October 2025 to March 2026), then will be hosted at the Departmental Archives in Périgueux in April 2026. Other locations are under discussion.
To view a slideshow of the construction of the exhibition at the PIP, click here.
To see the exhibition in its completed version at the PIP, click here.
To see the Bergerac version of the exhibition, click here.
Film
Documentary filmmaker Philippe Rostan is very interested in the idea of participating in this revival of Indochinese memory in Dordogne. Born in Vietnam to a French father and a Vietnamese mother, Philippe Rostan is the author of numerous documentaries, including Les Nems moi non plus (1993), Le Petit Vietnam (2007), Inconnu, présumé français (2009). In 2011, Les Trois guerres de Madeleine Riffaud won the Scam's Étoile prize. We are currently looking for a distributor.
Memorial
By unearthing the photographic treasures of his grandfather for fifteen years, Michel Lecat discovered hundreds of portraits of these Vietnamese workers who went on Sundays to the shop BONDIER Frères optique-photo.
From these hundreds of photographs, two giant mosaic portraits, 3 meters by 4 meters, will be created on ceramic tiles using digital printing. They will be affixed to the wall of the very attractive town hall of Creysse, near one of the camps that housed Indochinese workers 80 years ago. Each tile will feature the portrait of a Vietnamese individual, collectively forming a pixel of one of the two giant portraits.
The memorial is expected to be inaugurated in the spring of 2026.
Mausoleum
During the Second World War, 62 "Indochinese" died in Bergerac. They were buried in the Pont Saint Jean cemetery - also known as the Protestant cemetery. Each was given an individual grave, topped by a beautiful headstone. In 1972, the Bergerac town council wanted to reclaim some space. The remains of these men were transported in 62 small wooden boxes to the Beauferrier cemetery, and placed beneath the Indochinese mausoleum built in 1926 to house the remains of the Indochinese who died in Bergerac during the First World War.
On October 10, 2025, the town of Bergerac unveiled a marble plaque listing the 62 names.
Media
The passage of these thousands of "Annamites" has left significant traces in the memory of the people of Périgord, in Bergerac and in the Beunes valley. The local press has already begun to talk about our project to exhume this memory.