Anne Beaumanoir

Anne Beaumanoir about 1940

Anne Beaumanoir (born October 30, 1923 in Saint-Cast-le-Guildo , Bretagne ) is a French neurophysiologist , Jewish rescuer and Resistance fighter. She is committed to this day with lectures at conferences, seminars and educational events, especially in schools, against nationalism, racism and religious fanaticism.

Beaumanoir and her parents received the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations from Yad Vashem for their support for Jews in Brittany during the Second World War. She was a militant communist during World War II and part of the French resistance movement. In 1959 she was sentenced to 10 years in prison for supporting the National Liberation Front in the Algerian War .

Life

Childhood, studies

Anne Beaumanoir grew up in modest circumstances in Brittany. Her parents, Jean and Marthe Beaumanoir, were innkeepers. They were free minded. In the youth hostel movement (since 1936) Anne came into contact with Trotskyists and became enthusiastic about the adventurer and writer André Malraux . After the Spanish Civil War , she and her mother got involved in a solidarity committee to support the Spaniards who were fleeing the Franco fascists to France. During the Second World War Beaumanoir studied medicine and supported the Resistance, the resistance against the German occupation.

Second World War

In 1942 she became a member of the French Communist Party and went underground. There she met her great love, a German Jew. The party forbade private relations and separated the two, their lover was captured and shot.

In June 1944, informed friends her that the next day in the 13th arrondissement of Paris would take place house searches. They asked to warn a woman named Victoria who was hiding the Jewish Lisopravski family and a mother with a baby. Knowing that the Communist Party disapproved of such unauthorized rescue missions, Beaumanoir went to the woman's home and warned her and the family. The two youngest family members, 16-year-old son Daniel Lisopravski and 14-year-old daughter Simone, decided to go with Beaumanoir.

She took the children to a hiding place where several members of the French resistance were staying. The hiding place was discovered shortly afterwards by the Gestapo . The two children managed to escape over the roofs together with the leader of the group. Beaumanoir was not in Paris at the time. When she returned, she picked the children up from their temporary hiding place and brought them to their parents in Dinan , where they lived from then on.

Her father, Jean Beaumanoir, was interrogated by the police because he was (justified) suspected of being a member of the resistance. He was released for lack of evidence. Her mother Marthe Beaumanoir hid the two children in different places for two weeks, after which they lived in Beaumanoir's parents' house for a year. They survived the war and had contact with Beaumanoir and their parents afterwards.

After 1945

Anne Beaumanoir resumed her medical studies in Marseille . She eventually became a professor of neurology and married doctor Jo Roger, with whom she had three children. She later returned to Paris and went into medical research. The scientist became known as Annette Roger. Due to differing positions, the couple left the Communist Party in 1955. In Marseille Anne got to know worker priests and their social work among the Algerians living there. In the mid-1950s, the Algerian war threatened to split the colonial power France. Anne sided with the Algerian National Liberation Front and also convinced her husband. In 1957 Anne and Jo joined the network of the philosopher Francis Jeanson, which supported the Algerians in the liberation struggle from French colonial rule (in contrast to the Communist Party).

So Anne Beaumanoir again took sides against oppression and went underground, even though she had two sons. With her husband Jo, she took part in collecting money for the Algerian insurgents, they were betrayed, but only Anne was arrested in November 1959. She was pregnant with her daughter. The court sentenced her to ten years' imprisonment. She evaded conviction and fled to Tunisia alone via Italy. She agreed with her husband that he would follow with the children, but he did not. She then went into a relationship with an Algerian.

Through contact with Frantz Fanon in Tunis, she got into the government team of Ahmed Ben Bella , the first Algerian president in 1962 after the liberation. Tunis was the seat of the Provisional Government until the Liberation. The army, led by Houari Boumedienne and Abd al-Aziz Bouteflika , initially supported the left-liberal government. Anne Beaumanoir worked on building an advanced healthcare system.

After Boumedienne's coup in 1965, Anne narrowly escaped arrest and fled again. The amnesty in France was a long time coming, so Anne went to neighboring Switzerland. In Geneva she headed the neurophysiology of a clinic from 1965 until she retired.

reception

The German writer Anne Weber published an epic verse on Beaumanoir in 2020 , for which she was awarded the German Book Prize.

Autobiography

• We wanted to change life
  • Volume 1: Living for Justice. Memories 1923 to 1956. Edition Contra-Bass, Hamburg, 2019, ISBN 978-3-943446-41-8 .
  • Volume 2: Fight for Freedom. Algeria 1954 to 1965. Edition Contra-Bass, Hamburg, 2020, ISBN 978-3-943446-46-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Pierre Cochez: Anne Beaumanoir, une vie d'actions. In: La Croix . September 5, 2016, archived from the original on November 2, 2016 ; accessed on October 16, 2020 (French). 
2. ↑ Anne Beaumanoir. Les souvenirs de guerre d'une Juste. In: Le Télégramme. June 6, 2015, accessed May 18, 2018 (French). 
3. ^ ^{A b} Peter Nowak : Courageous woman: Anne Beaumanoir. In: New Germany . June 26, 2019, accessed on October 6, 2020 (beginning of article can be viewed). 
4. ^ ^{A b c d e} Israel Gutman, Lucien Lazare, Sara Bender: Dictionnaires des Justes de France (=  Encyclopedia of righteous among the nations ). Yad Vashem / Arthème Fayard, Jerusalem / Paris 2003, ISBN 2-213-61435-0 (French).
5. ↑ Dirk Kniphals: Convincing book price for Anne Weber: Literary celebration for a heroine. In: taz.de . October 12, 2020, accessed October 16, 2020 .