Lucie Aubrac

Writing

Born: June 29, 1912 · Paris, France
Died: March 14, 2007 (age 94)

Lucie Samuel (29 June 1912 – 14 March 2007), born Lucie Bernard, and better known as Lucie Aubrac, was a French history teacher and member of the French Resistance during World War II. In 1938, she earned an agrégation of history (something highly uncommon for a woman at that time), and in 1939 she married Raymond Samuel, who became known as Raymond Aubrac during the war.

In 1940, Lucie was amongst the first to join the French Resistance. In Clermont-Ferrand, Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie formed the Resistance group La Dernière Colonne, later known as Libération-sud, with her husband and Jean Cavaillès. During 1941, the group carried out two sabotage attacks at train stations in Perpignan and Cannes. In February, they organised the distribution of 10,000 propaganda flyers, but one of the distributors was caught by the police, leading to the arrest of d'Astier's niece and uncle. At this time, Lucie gave birth to her first child. The group decided to hide, and, after a few months' hiatus, began to work on an underground newspaper, Libération. The first edition was put together with the help of the typographers from a local newspaper and printed on paper supplied by local trade-unionists; 10,000 copies were produced in July 1941.

In March 1943, Raymond was arrested. He was released in May, after Lucie intervened with the local Vichy public prosecutor, telling him they were members of the Résistance and he had 24 hours to release Raymond or be killed, and the couple then organized the clever escape of three other members of their group. A month later, Raymond was arrested again. Lucie went to see Klaus Barbie, the notorious Gestapo chief in Vichy France and claimed to be Raymond's fiancée, saying he was named "Ermelin" (one of his aliases) and had been caught in a raid while innocently visiting a doctor. She was told Raymond was to be executed for being a member of the Resistance, but she was able to get permission to marry him first, supposedly to save her honor and legitimize the child with which she really was pregnant. When Raymond was being brought back to prison after "wedding", he and fifteen other prisoners were rescued by a commando unit led by Lucie, who attacked the vehicle he was in, killing the six guards.

In 1944, Charles de Gaulle established a consultative assembly, which Lucie joined as a resistance representative, making her the first woman to sit on a French parliamentary assembly. In 1945, she published the first short history of the French Resistance. In 1946, she and Raymond hosted Ho Chi Minh at their home when he went to France on what turned out to be an unsuccessful mission to win independence for the then-French colony of Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh and Raymond became friends. ...

Source: Article "Lucie Aubrac" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.