Renée Lévy

Renée Léa Lévy (born September 25, 1906 in Auxerre , † August 31, 1943 ) was a French resistance fighter . After the war she was buried in the crypt of the Mémorial de la France combattante on Mont Valérien .

Life

Commemorative plaque for Renée Lévy in the Marais in the 3rd arrondissement in Paris

Renée Lévy was the granddaughter of Alfred Lévy , who was the chief rabbi in France . Her parents Léon Lévy and Berthe Lucie Lévy taught French language and literature.

In 1909 her father died unexpectedly after a brief illness. In the newspaper for the Yonne département on Monday, May 10, 1909, it was noted that “his health condition was critical, but did not foresee such a sudden end.” Berthe Lucie Lévy then followed up with her two children Renée and Germaine Paris . Her first-born daughter Germaine took up the profession of a lawyer . It was during the Second World War in the concentration camp Auschwitz deported , where she died 1943rd

Berthe Lucie Lévy received a teaching post at the Victor Hugo grammar school in the rue de Sévigné in the third arrondissement of Paris. Renée grew up in this old quarter of Paris, not far from the Musée Carnavalet and the Saint-Fargeau library . She was seven years old and attended the same high school where her mother taught. In the upper classes she learned ancient languages .

After graduating from high school, Renée Lévy began studying English because she wanted to teach the English language and literature. However, several longer stays in England were necessary for such a study and, since her sister had just married, she did not want to leave her mother alone. So she took up a degree in French literature and language and made the Agrégation in 1932 . She then taught at the girls' grammar school Fénelon in Lille , then at the grammar school Victor Duruy in Paris and from 1937 at the grammar school Victor Hugo there.

After the beginning of the Second World War, a provisional high school was set up in the casino in the seaside resort of Cayeux-sur-Mer for the children of the holidaymakers there so that they did not have to return to Paris, which was threatened by bombing. Refugees from neighboring departments, the Paris area and Belgium also came. Renée Lévy, who was on vacation in Cayeux-sur-Mer, worked as a French teacher at this high school. After the defeat and the passage of the Law of October 3, 1940 on the Status of Jews , which appeared in the Journal Officiel of October 18, 1940 and forbade Jews to perform any public service function, Renée went underground. She joined the resistance group musée de l'Homme and distributed their illegal newspaper Résistance , as well as leaflets and newspapers, and also the speech by Winston Churchill of October 21, 1940, in which he called on France to gather strength as the dawn broke will rise again.

The group from the musée de l'Homme disorganized itself because of denunciations . Renée Lévy escaped police arrest and joined the Hector group. She should have been assigned to send information to London . This information covered the position of the Wehrmacht , airfields , railway lines, the construction of speedboats in Argenteuil , tanks from Renault and even information about submarine bases and the production of synthetic gasoline in Germany .

Renée Lévy was arrested on October 25, 1941 on the basis of a denunciation by the German occupiers who found a hidden radio transmitter in her apartment, on which the charges against Renée Lévy were based. She was taken to La Santé prison in Paris with other victims of the Night and Fog Decree of December 7, 1941 . This decree by Adolf Hitler , signed by Wilhelm Keitel , made it possible to arrest civilians in the occupied territories and deport them to the German Reich without notifying their relatives . Prisoners disappeared without a trace and no information was given about their detention or their further fate. As for Renée Lévy, it was learned that she was brought to Germany on February 11, 1942 and that her dossier was handed over to the Gestapo . She suffered imprisonment and imprisonment. Her letters that she tried to send to her family have disappeared due to the death of a fellow prisoner. Renée Lévy was imprisoned successively in Aachen , Essen and Prüm . On April 30, 1943, she was sentenced to death in a show trial in the Cologne court at half past seven in the evening.

Her mutilated body, which indicated that Renée Lévy had been beheaded, was transferred to France after the war. The repatriation took place along with the remains of fifteen other resistance fighters on November 11, 1945. Renée Lévy's coffin was pulled by white horses during this impressive ceremony and passed the Paris Arch of Triumph . She and Berty Albrecht are the only women whose grave is on Mont Valérien, the Mémorial de la France combattante.

See also

• Women in the Resistance

Awards

• Renée Lévy and five other women were awarded the Ordre de la Liberation donated by Charles de Gaulle .
• Croix de guerre 1939–1945 with a palm branch
• Médaille de la Resistance
• In 1955 Renée Lévy was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor.

bibliography

• Annie Rosès, Portrait de famille ou l'enfance retrouvée , les Océanîles livre d'artiste, 2009
• Jacqueline Leitmann, Celle qui repose au Mont Valérien , Voix et Visages, n ° 180, may-juin 1982, p. 5.
• Claude Lévy, Renée Lévy, universitaire et résistante , Archives juives, n ° 29/2, 1996, pp. 124-126.
• Jean Kohn, Renée Lévy , AMIF (Journal de l'Association des Médecins Israélites de France), n ° 186, May 4th 1970, pp. 711-712.
• Jean Novosseloff, Mémorial-Memoresist, Renée Lévy , Mémoire et Espoirs de la Résistance