My Project

I am developing this blog as my presentation for the Scottish Baccalaureate. As a feminist, I have always been interested in women's side of history, a side which is often overlooked and forgotten about. When first thinking about the French Resistance I knew names such as Charles De Gaulle, Jean Moulin or Raymond Aubrac; surely women had to have been a part of this movement too? I worked on the assumption that because men lead the battles, the physical confrontations, that women must have played the underground roles. I began my research online, discovering that the majority of women's stories from this time were available exclusively in French, though overall the most talked about stories of Resistance action remained those of the men. After exploring the scarce internet resources, I went to Lyon, the Resistance centre of World War Two France. I have explored the archives of Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance, and Montluc Prison in Lyon to find the stories featured. Upon returning to Scotland, I have begun translation work to allow these French stories to be shared with the rest of the world. These women played diverse roles in the Resistance movement: they hid escaped prisoners; they delivered messages; they recruited agents; they distributed propaganda; they were brave fighters and their stories deserve to be told.

10 January 2016

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.
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