Lucie Aubrac

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Lucie Aubrac in May 2003

Lucie Aubrac (real name Lucie Samuel, née Bernard ; born June 29, 1912 in Mâcon , † March 14, 2007 in Issy-les-Moulineaux ) was a French history teacher. During the Vichy regime in France and the occupation by the Wehrmacht in World War II , she was a member of the Resistance .

Origin and youth

Lucie was in the Burgundy town of Macon, the daughter living in modest circumstances Winzerfamilie born Bernard. She successfully took the entrance exam for the École normal supérieure to become a teacher. However, she refused to wear a uniform , which is why she had to earn a living from the age of 17 in a Paris restaurant as a dishwasher. There she came into contact with members of the Parti communiste français (PCF) and other French communists . She supported the communist idea, sold newspapers and became a feminist . As a nonconformist , however, she refused to attend party's training courses in Moscow . During the 1930s, she met young Poles, Hungarians, Germans and Romanians in Paris who were on the run from the Nazis. In 1936 she seized the opportunity to travel to Germany on the occasion of the Olympic Games , where she witnessed anti-Semitism that finally opened her eyes to the danger of fascism. At the same time she continued her studies of history and geography at the Sorbonne in Paris . After becoming a teacher, she worked in Strasbourg .

In the Resistance

When the war broke out in 1939, she lived with the young Jewish civil engineer Raymond Samuel . They married on December 14, 1939. After the occupation of northern France, her husband became a prisoner of the Wehrmacht in Sarrebourg . In the course of a general riot in August 1940, she managed to free him from the prison there. Both settled in Lyon in the unoccupied zone and founded a resistance group. In 1941 this group merged with the Liberation network founded by Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie . Their first child, Jean-Pierre, was also born in 1941. Together with d'Astier de la Vigerie, they founded the underground newspaper of the same name. Outwardly, the two led a normal bourgeois life, she as a teacher, he as an engineer. In secret, they worked underground against the Vichy regime. At first they concentrated on the publication of their newspaper, but from 1942 they also took care of the procurement of weapons, money and hiding places.

On March 15, 1943, Raymond Samuel, who had papers with the name Raymond Vallet, was arrested by the Milice , but released shortly afterwards. The police did not recognize his real identity; During the interrogations he described himself as an ordinary black market trader . However, his wife Lucie played a crucial role in his release. She personally visited the public prosecutor, threatened him citing General de Gaulle and demanded the release of her husband. Ten days later, in a commando operation, the Resistance freed the prisoners Maurice Kriegel-Valrimont , Serge Ravanel and François Morin , who had been arrested together with Raymond Samuel. Lucie and Raymond Samuel were involved in the action. The members of the Kommando gained access to the prisoner ward of a hospital by posing as Gestapo agents.

On June 21, the Gestapo arrested Raymond again, under his new alias Aubrac, together with Jean Moulin in Caluire-et-Cuire . He was taken to the prison in Fort Montluc near Lyon. On October 21, 1943, Lucie and other members of the resistance freed him again, along with thirteen other Resistants. In the following months they lived underground, moving from hiding place to hiding place. Thanks to their personal connections, they and their first child, little Jean-Pierre, were able to flee to London in February 1944 . A few days after their arrival, Lucie gave birth to her second child, a daughter, Cathérine. The family kept the name Aubrac, the last alias they had used in France before they fled.

After the war

At the end of the war, Lucie Aubrac worked in the consultative assembly of de Gaulle's provisional government. She refused any hero worship and a political career. Her rank as a history teacher was restored, after which she returned to this profession. She later became involved as a human rights activist in Morocco and Algeria (including in the League for Human Rights ).

In 1984 Aubrac published her memoir, entitled Ils partiront dans l'ivresse, in connection with a discussion about the Vichy period in France. The 1997 released film Lucie Aubrac by Claude Berri is loosely based on the events of the second liberation of her husband.

Lucie Aubrac was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Honors

The French Post issued a special stamp with the portraits of the couple on May 26, 2018.

On June 19, 2018, a station on the Paris Métro was named after her.

See also

plant

literature

  • Laurent Douzou: Lucie Aubrac, Paris 2009, Editions Perrin, ISBN 978-2-262-02746-9 .
  • Christiane Goldenstedt: Lucie Aubrac - the Théroigne de Méricourt of the French Resistance, in: Spirale der Zeit, 7/2010, writings from the House of Women's History in Bonn (also in English), Barbara Budrich Verlag, pp. 50–53.
  • Florence Hervé: Lucie Aubrac: freedom fighter. Obituary for the Grande Dame of the Resistance, In: Femina Politica 2/2007, Volume 16.
  • Heinz Fischer: Courage of women. Life pictures from world history , dtv, Munich 2006, pp. 158–173, ISBN 978-3-423-34375-6 .
  • Claire Gorrora: Reviewing Gender and the Resistance. The Case of Lucie Aubrac . In: Harry R. Kedward, Nancy Wood (Eds.): The Liberation of France. Image and Event . Berg Publ., Oxford 1995, ISBN 1-85973-087-6 .

Movies

  • Lucie Aubrac, heroine of the Resistance - documentary, director: Emmanuel Laborie, FRA 2000, 30 min.
  • Lucie Aubrac - Directed and written by: Claude Berri , FRA 1997
  • Army in the Shadow - Director: Jean-Pierre Melville , FRA / ITA 1969

Web links

Commons : Lucie Aubrac  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ France - Postage Stamps - 2018 - Lucie Aubra, 1912–2007 & Raymond Aubrac, 1939–2007. Retrieved July 28, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Arte FRA  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.arte.tv  
personal data
SURNAME Aubrac, Lucie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Samuel, Lucie; Bernard, Lucie (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH June 29, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Mâcon
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 2007
Place of death Issy-les-Moulineaux