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.
