Marie-Louise Le Duc

She was very sporty and joined the Breton Resistance alongside her husband. They both
wanted to secure a future for their three sons. Marie-Louise worked with a network which
gave accommodation to people wanting to escape occupied France. Amongst many, she
housed airmen of the allies who would secretly board English ships during the night. Mme X- the name which she was given by the British- was arrested three times and three times
she escaped.

Lucienne Guezennec

Lucienne joined the Resistance where she worked in newspaper printing. She nearly lost an arm in an automatic printing press. But, because she was almost essential to the process, she quickly resumed her post. She was wounded in a raid which the German Military carried out on the printing press where she worked; Lucienne was the sole survivor. Her comrades found a way to help her escape from hospital.

Yvette Farnoux

Yvette, a Jewish, Parisian student, joined the Fight. She directed elements of the vast underground social service movement of the Resistance. It was in the Resistance that she met her (future) husband, Jean-Guy Bernard. They were arrested together. Yvette was pregnant when she was imprisoned; she gave birth in prison to a still-born child. She was then deported. Jean-Guy never came back.

Jeanne Chaton

Jeanne Chaton was arrested during World War One and sent to work in Germany. When she returned, she resumed her studies and gained qualifications to teach in the provinces then in Paris.

During the Second World War, she collaborated with a multitude Resistance groups, the last was the University National Front. This time, she thought, she had plenty of good reasons to be arrested- which were saving her sanity.

Danielle Mitterrand

The wife of future President Francois Mitterrand was still a teenager when she became involved in the Resistance. Her parents gave asylum to certain Resistance leaders. Danielle helped to nurse wounded Resistance fighters. It was at this time that she met her future husband, who was then the head of a resistance movement made up of former prisoners of war. 

Lise Lesèvre

She was the mother of two teenagers, who, like their parents, belonged to the Resistance. Her role as a mother was enlarged as she was tasked with welcoming young people to the Resistance movement. She was arrested for possession of secret papers, and she was frightfully, unimaginably tortured by Klaus Barbie (the Butcher of Lyon) before she was deported with her husband and her 16 year old son. Of the three, she was the only one to survive, but the hardships she faced left her irredeemably damaged. 

Suzanne Vallon

When they were forced to leave France because their resistance activities had been discovered, Suzanne Vallon and her husband fled to London. Then she was sent to North Africa to work as an ophthalmologist. Because she wanted to continue to help the Resistance and fight for the freedom of her country, she was able to accompany allied troops who were marching north to free France. 

Denise Vernay

Links in scouting allowed Denise Vernay to leave Nice to join the Franc-Tireur group in Lyon. As a liaison agent, she had to memorise many messages and addresses in a city which she didn’t know. Like her colleagues, she had orders not to associate with anyone so led a very lonely existence. She was arrested and then deported. 

Evelyne Sullerot

She belonged to a Protestant family. The occupation came as a surprise when they were spending their holidays in the South-West. After a stay in Uzès, Evelyne, who was 17, returned to her hometown where she worked for the Resistance. She then helped her father whose psychiatric clinic gave shelter to Jews. She was arrested for her anti-Vichy activities and spent time in prison. Evelyne became a renowned historian and sociologist after the War. 

France Pejot

France and her sister were involved very early in the ranks of the Franc-Tireur movement, without ceasing to keep control of the shop which their family had in Lyon. She hid documents in the apartment which her parents had left to her. Thanks to her unexpected acting skills, she managed to be released from prison many times, and save many important men of the resistance. After she was arrested for the third time, she was deported to a work camp and then to Ravensbruck. 

Enna Léger

The story of Enna was particularly hard to trace. She was a significant contributor to the Resistance movement in Lyon alongside her husband, Auguste. The couple largely helped Jewish families who were struggling to find a place to stay. They were arrested in 1944, and they were both tortured in Montluc Prison, Lyon by Klaus Barbie. Afterwards, they were deported separately, and when they returned to France after the war they had become weak from the severity of their torture. Enna lost her sight while in a concentration camp and has been blind since the War. This video is Enna's testimony in the trial of Klaus Barbie.

Anne-Marie Vion

From 1941, she helped French prisoners escape from camps. She was arrested for treason, and then tortured. Anne-Marie was imprisoned in Saint-Gilles, then deported to Germany and sentenced to death. She saw the hell that was Ravensbruck before she was gassed. 

Catherine Roux

This young girl worked in the offices of a factory where her boss asked her to “do two or three small tasks” for the Resistance. These activities soon led to a full-time commitment to the resistance. She was sent to Paris- where she had never been before-, she was a liaison agent before she was arrested and deported. 

Madeleine Michelis

Madeleine always felt patriotic to her country. She was a teacher in a secondary school in Amiens. She was arrested on 12th February 1944 for her participating in helping escaped prisoners, and in rerouting fallen airmen of the Allies. As a result she was tortured, and because she refused to betray her comrades, she was killed.

Monsieur Bernard Bartholome speaks about his mother's experience as a Resistance fighter

I have had the absolute privilege of meeting with M. Bartholome, who has invaluable family connections to the French Resistance. He explained to me the story of his mother who was an incredibly brave Resistance agent. Not only did she risk her life working as a liaison agent in occupied France, but she survived imprisonment in multiple concentration camps across Germany. In the video, Bernard speaks about his journey to finding his mother's story; a story which she did not share with her children. He explains her work as a Resistance agent, and then her imprisonment firstly in France and later in Germany. Below is an English transcript translated from the French audio. The pictures in the video show her at various stages of her life. 

She didn’t talk much. She didn’t explain what they had lived through. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because she wanted to forget or because she didn’t want to make us unhappy by telling us all that she had seen...

So, I know that my mother was deported with my maternal grandmother. They were separated from each other: my maternal grandmother went to a camp, I don’t know where, and my mother went to another camp. The Germans separated the children from their parents.

I wanted to do research on the internet. I entered the name of my mother, where she lived, her date of birth, and I found a small article which talked about what she did during the war. My mother’s name was Renézé-Emery Marguerite and she was born 12th January 1923 in Rennes, Brittany. She joined the resistance in July 1942 when she was 19. She transported documents (top secret papers) between Rennes and Lorient (which were not far from each other).

She was arrested in a district of Paris on 15th April 1943 by the Germans. She was incarcerated in Fresnes; Fresnes was a prison situated near of Paris, similar to Montluc prison in Lyon. She was deported as an ‘NN’ prisoner. NN is a term [created by Adolf Hitler] used by Klaus Barbie. It was given to political prisoners who were not Jews and were not military. So they became NN. I do not know exactly what they said. She left Paris on 29th August 1943 by train. She arrived at Ravensbruck, one of the concentration camps in Germany, on 2nd September 1943. Here, she was tattooed. All those who had been deported had a tattoo; this was branded on their arms like they were cars. After this, her route took her to a different concentration camp in Germany. After Ravensbruck she went to Sachsen, another concentration camp, then Frohburg; she changed many times between concentration camps.

She was freed in April 1945 when the war was over. The camp was liberated by the Americans. Afterwards, she was reunited with her mother.

Simone Lagrange

Simone Lagrange was imprisoned by Klaus Barbie before her 13th birthday. She was Jewish, and her parents had been involved in Resistance work. They were turned in by a neighbour and taken to Gestapo Headquarters in Lyon. In the video- an extract of Simone's confession at the trial of Klaus Barbie- she describes the mental and physical torture he inflicted on her during her imprisonment.

Barbie then deported Simone and her mother to Auschwitz in 1944. She hadn't seen her father since their initial imprisonment at this point. On 19th January 1945, Simone was being led in a march to Ravensbruck, another concentration camp in Germany. On this day, she saw her father within a group of men on a similar march. She describes this experience:
"An S.S. officer approached me and smiled. "Who is that?", he asked me, "is that your father?"
I was happy, broken with emotion, and in one breath I said "yes", because it was my dad.
"Do you want to hug him?" he asked.
I couldn't speak, I replied with a nod of my head. Smiling again, the officer motioned for my father to approach, while at the same time pushing me in his direction. Of course, I ran. My dad, meanwhile, held out his arms. That is when the S.S. officer, who had followed me up to him, made my father drop to his knees and shot him in the head. He did that here, right in front of my eyes! How can I describe my horror, my fear? My dear father was assassinated, coldly, while the war was coming to an end, struck down by a "man", a Nazi, perhaps a father himself..."

Hélène Renal

She was a Parisian Jew who had to settle in Lyon to fight the Occupation under the orders of a leader of whom she knew nothing. Because of him, she moved constantly. She assumed the duties of a typist, and at the same time she encrypted and decrypted telegram messages for the resistance. Released after her first arrest, she resumed her work although she was constantly afraid. When she was arrested a second time, she was deported.

Simone Martin-Chauffier

Her entire family was in the resistance. In 1940, Simone and her husband gave their support to one of the first networks established in Paris, the group of Groupe du Musée de l'Homme. Soon after, they moved to Lyon where their home served as an assembly point for meetings, and provided accommodation for numerous resisters. Simone devoted a huge part of her time to ensuring her family were fed and healthy. 

Renée Caussin

She completed over 300 underground missions for the Resistance, and during this time she started her own Resistance group for women in Amiens, Northern France. This group printed and delivered newspapers and leaflets. Arrested in July 1942, she died at Auschwitz.

The Unidentified Woman

The story of this young woman is particularly interesting because she was never identified. She was clearly one of the only women to be allowed into the Maquis. It was extremely rare for women to be allowed to carry arms; this was against tradition, war was "an affair of men".  

Gabrielle Ferrières

She went into the Resistance so that she was able to remain close to her husband and her brother, the famous philosopher Jean Cavaillès. She served as a liaison agent between him and the Resistance groups which he had founded. All three of them were arrested. She was freed after many months in prison, her husband survived deportation, but her brother was executed for treason. 

Charlotte Delbo

Charlotte Delbo wrote poetry inspired by the horror she lived through in concentration camps during the War. She was an active Resistance member, sent to Auschwitz for her 'crimes'. She spent her time as a Resistance member distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets. She rose within the Resistance as an important female figure because she didn't follow the orders of men; she worked alongside them. The French police arrested her on 2nd March 1942, and she was then turned over to the Gestapo who imprisoned her. Below is one of her poems:

I'm begging you
Do something
Learn a step
A dance
Something which satisfies you
Which makes you feel comfortable in your skin,
your hair
Learn to walk and to laugh
Because it would be too stupid
in the end
when so many are dead
and you live
without doing anything in your life. 

Annie Kriegel

Because she was only fifteen, Annie (who originated from a family who didn’t actively practise Judaism) joined a resistance group of communists, the only group which would accept someone as young as her. Instructed with important missions, she had a job working on a newspaper in Grenoble which allowed her to help her family financially. She was quickly forced to sacrifice her studies- which she resumed immediately after the war was over. She had a brilliant career as a scholar after the War. 

Hélène Elek

“When Joseph [friend of Hélène] died, Henriette [Serge’s mother] lived with her resistance comrade, Edgar, with who she worked with too. She was expecting another child, they both continued in their resistance work, and I took Serge with me. Edgar and Henriette were arrested together. Henriette was taken to Drancy, and there to a concentration camp, where she was put directly into a gas chamber because she was in her last month of pregnancy. She was 26, 27 years old, a beautiful young woman; she was so beautiful. Henriette didn’t come back, Serge was left alone. I moved him everywhere in hiding for six months. He was three and a half, beautiful, intelligent, and marvellous. I loved him. He played at the edge of the bed, and below there were grenades, a gun, a bit of everything. I didn’t sleep very well, you know. I was afraid of everything which kills men. See, when I started to organise the resistance, I said: “Just about anything, but I do not kill anyone, do not count on me to kill men.” They understood me: “You can be very useful without killing anyone; we will not ask that of you.” Women if they want, we are not against it, but if you don’t want to, you will do other things.” I wanted to keep Serge, as I had sworn to Joseph. I discussed this with Henriette’s two sisters when they came back, but they wanted to take him away. I don’t know what became of him, that child.”

Soeur Edwige Dumas

She was enrolled in the Pacifists army of Saint Francois when she joined the Resistance. During the bombing of Calais by the Allies, she nursed civilians and the injured soldiers from both sides. Risking her life, she accommodated, amongst others, a communist resistant desired by the Germans. 

The Activities of Women in the Resistance of Lyon

While the majority of women in Lyon, and across France, acted as agents of liaison, they also held prominent roles as: secretaries, translators, distributors of Resistance propaganda, and social workers. As well as these jobs, women gave accommodation to Jews and other resistance members. Women also played a part in shipping letters to the Allies, forging papers, and hosting resistance meetings in their homes. These Resistance women risked their lives to help French people to escape the S.T.O (Service du Travail Obligatoire) enforced by the German occupiers. They held roles in hiring new underground agents, organising the escape of prisoners and decoding/ coding messages. 

Ida Bourdet

Mother of three children, Ida contributed to the resistance movement as a secretary while her husband, Claude (a member of the fight, before he became one of the leaders), went into hiding. Finding shelter was one of Claude’s main concerns. When Claude was captured, Ida left her children with friends and fled to Paris to try to her the Resistance on behalf of her husband. 

Map of the Involvement of Women in the Resistance

Violette Szabo

 One of the few memorials to the French Resistance and their fight located in the UK, this memorial to Violette Szabo is situated outside Lambeth Palace SE1, the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. This marks the work of not only Violette Szabo, but of all the contributors to SOE (Special Operations Executive) across the United Kingdom and Europe. 

Violette Szabo was a French resistance agent during World War Two who liaised between the SOE in London and the resistance in occupied France. She was born in France, but was an agent for the British during the War. Violette lost her husband in 1942, and continued her fight as a widow. She was honoured with this memorial, as well as the George Cross, Croix de Guerre and Médaille de la Résistance.

France Bloch Serazin

France was a chemical engineer, she maintained contact with an underground Communist group; she hid a mimeograph in her home and printed leaflets. She quickly established connections with the Maquis (rural guerrilla bands of resistance fighters) for whom she made, in a laboratory in her apartment, grenades, detonators and explosives. She herself participated in certain resistance actions.

She was arrested in May 1942; she was tried with a group of 24 resistance members of whom 19 were sentenced to death. She saw many successive prisons in France and in Germany before she was executed in Hamburg in February 1943.

Célia Bertin

A student of literature, Célia was quickly enroled in the resistance during the first days if the Occupation, her knowledge of English making her precious to the allied airmen being hidden nearby. She was forced to flee Paris, and she hid in the Jura where she wrote her first novel. Amongst a number of works, ‘Femmes sous l’Occupation’ is her most famous, published in 1993. 

Olga Bancie

Olga was a Romanian immigrant and a militant communist. She was a member of the resistance in Paris. She participated in over one hundred attacks against the German army, meaning about half of the battles fought by the Manouchian group (network of French immigrant resistance fighters). She was arrested, deported, and condemned to death. She was executed in Germany. 

Cecile Rol-Tanguy

She was in the resistance in Place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris. She was the wife of the FFI (French Forces of the Interior) leader of the Paris uprisings. She was inseparable from her typewriter which she carried everywhere with her, along with her husband’s gun, both hidden in her baby’s pram. She remembers: “It was at 6am when I typed the special order of the uprising of 19th August which was handed to liaison agents at 9am.”

Memorial outside Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance

Daisy Martin

Daisy Martin was a social worker. Before the war, she was a member of the committee of Women’s Social and Civic Union which drove forward and promoted the role of women in society. For the Christian union, she became an agent of the resistance movement, and then a secretary for the unified Resistance army. She provided accommodation for resisters of the STO (Service du Travail Obligatoire – Required Work of the French for the Germans), and she helped them rejoin the Maquis. Daisy was arrested on 6th March 1944 and interrogated by the Gestapo (Nazi secret police) numerous times. She was shot in Saint Genis-Leval (suburb of Lyon) on 20th August 1944 alongside 120 other prisoners.

Renée Mirande

“We said: “Yes, we are communists, but above all we have a beautiful country which we love, we must save.” I said to a comrade: “I am a communist, it’s true, but I am a mother of a family, I have children, and if I don’t start to be a good mother for my family, and to be good at my job, I will not be a good communist. And I will not be a good communist anymore, if I don’t love and defend my country.” From that moment, my decision was made. Without question, despite everything. My husband was a prisoner (this I knew after two months), I had two children, no resources other than my job, and, at that time, the job of a lawyer had tumbled, it had become three times zero. I thought to myself: “And if something happens, what will become of my children?” But also: “And if nothing is done, what will become of our children?” And again: “If I don’t return, they will understand, without a doubt, when they are adults. They will understand the need to make this choice.””

Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier

“The resistance gradually resulted in tens of thousands of women who, if nobody had spoken to them, wouldn’t have even had the idea that it was possible to be free from the occupation without retaliating and that they, personally, could act. Today, there are many still struggling in businesses and in neighbourhoods with the same goal of living a free and happy life, they continue the resistance. In the greater movement of female emancipation, they were a force of solidary action. The expression of their desire for peace remains strong in the fight for freedom.

Marie-Jo Chombart de Lawe

Resistance, for a young girl of 16 years old, is primarily small refusals. Refusal to allow the pavement to occupants, wearing conspicuous tricolored clothing, looking without graciousness. The Germans, she saw them for the first time at L’Arcouest, the boarding point for the l’Ile de Bréhat where she lived. Two of them in a Jeep. On the wings, they hung the hats of French sailors. This was an insult. A provocation. And then came the feeling of suffocation, of inexistence. Parents, rightists, 14-18 year olds, didn’t like it at all, their uniforms taking the street as if it belonged to them. Very quickly, her family began to help those who wanted to join the English. It was spontaneous. The spontaneity was organised, the path was short. The escape division connected with London worked wonders. They began the recovery of airmen shot down over France and planned their return to England.

Entrance to the Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation in Lyon which located in what was once a French military Heath school, but during World War Two became occupied by Klaus Barbie- the butcher of Lyon- and the Nazis.

“If the echo of their voices falter, we will perish” - Paul Eluard

Elisabeth Terrenoire

"What I have known, personally, is the life of a resistance woman. There are lots of men who have kept their underground activities secret, from their whole family, and from their wife. That complete terrible silence could be imposed upon them by their participation in dangerous actions.
But, in general, here is what happened. For weeks, months, years sometimes, us, the women, we lived beside a tense man, distracted, often in a bad mood because he felt humiliated. One beautiful day, the face was cheered up. The man has found a way to get into a resistance organisation. He must leave his position or his studies. No matter, he wants to pledge. Then, he turned to his wife, to his mother if he was young, and he said to her: “Let me go, accept and share my sacrifice.” I cannot say that women accepted this lightly or with enthusiasm, but they finally said “yes” all the same. And this agreement was in itself an act of resistance, and wasn’t always easy. Because many people forget the danger when they are used to it.
Then began for the wife, for the mother, suffering, and anguish of every moment.
But- it can be said- woman more often shared the risks, she became an associate. When the man left his home, she answered the phone, gave him a hint of the caller’s name, the location and nature of the rendezvous. If he were told: “I am Monsieur Someone, a dentist, I expect your husband on such a day”, she wouldn’t protest that her husband did not have toothache. She interpreted and recorded."

— Elisabeth Terrenoire (played an important role in the Resistance in Lyon)

Victor Hugo

"Ces femmes sont la foi, la vertu, la raison, l'équité, la pudeur, la fierté, la justice"

"These are women of faith, virtue, reason, equity, modesty, pride, justice "

Élise Rivet

This religious woman was the mother superior general of the congregation of Notre-Dame de la Compassion, in Lyon, who supported young girls in difficulty. She became involved in the resistance very early as an intelligence agent, and participated particularly in the rescue of Jewish children in connection with the cardinal Gerlier. She provided accommodated resisters of the STO (obligatory service work enforced by Germans upon the French) and kept weapons on behalf of the united movements of resistance until 1943. She was arrested on 24th March 1944 and interrogated in the local Gestapo base. She was transferred to Romainville and then deported to Ravensbruck when she was gassed on 30th March 1945.