Suzanne Spaak

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Suzanne Spaak (born July 6, 1905 , † August 12, 1944 in Paris ) was a Franco-Belgian Resistance fighter of the Red Chapel .

family

Suzanne Spaak was the daughter of a large Belgian banker. Through her marriage to the screenwriter Claude Spaak , she became the sister-in-law of Paul-Henri Spaak , one of the most important Belgian statesmen.

By order of Heinz Pannwitz , the head of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle from July 1943 seven members of her family were in Sippenhaft arrested and released back in May 1944th

Suzanne Spaak had two children. For further family members see also Spaak .

Life

Suzanne Spaak lived in Paris and enjoyed the luxury and prestige of the leading social circles. Her husband bought pictures by the Belgian painter René Magritte , with whom he was friends. In 1936 Magritte created a portrait of Suzanne Spaak. After the occupation of France, this changed: Suzanne Spaak joined the resistance against the racist occupation policy and in 1941 reorganized the Mouvement National Contre le Racisme (MNCR), which she took over as chairman. This made her apartment in Paris a meeting place for the Resistance . She kept in contact with both Gaullist and communist resistance organizations. “She takes part in the most daring operations without worrying about the danger”. She also took in Leopold Trepper after he had escaped from Gestapo detention and arranged for him to hide in an Oratorian church and in a retirement home.

By order of Pannwitz, Suzanne Spaak was arrested on November 9, 1943 in Brussels and taken to Fresnes prison in the Paris suburb of Fresnes . She was sentenced to death in January 1944 and shot in her cell on August 12, 1944 , thirteen days before the Allied liberation of Paris. In order to remove the traces of this crime, Pannwitz had her body buried in the Bagneux cemetery in Paris . The grave site was only marked with the words “A Belgian woman”. At the same time, Pannwitz had a letter written to the foreign minister of the Belgian government-in-exile in London, alleging that his sister-in-law Suzanne Spaak had been brought to a safe place in Germany to survive the war.

Honors

In 1985, Suzanne Spaak was honored by the Israeli government as Righteous Among the Nations . In Yad Vashem , a tree with a memorial plaque was planted in the “Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations”.

See also

Movies

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans Coppi: The "Red Orchestra" in the field of tension between resistance and intelligence work. The Trepper Report of June 1943 . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 3, 1996, p. 131 (current p. 457) (pdf; 7.4 MB).
  2. ↑ Suzanne Spaak on the Yad Vashem website
  3. ↑ Movie description on Internet Movie Database
  4. ↑ Movie description on Internet Movie Database
  5. ↑ Description of the film on Cinemotions.com (French) ( Memento of the original from April 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cinemotions.com
  6. ↑ Movie description on Internet Movie Database
personal data
SURNAME Spaak, Suzanne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian-French resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1905
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1944
Place of death Paris