A great voice of the French Resistance has been extinguished. Madeleine Riffaud died this Wednesday, announced her publisher Dupuis, confirming information from the daily Humanity for which she was war correspondent. She was 100 years old. Born on August 23, 1924 in Arvillers, in Santerre, between Amiens and Roye, she mobilized very young under the occupation. In a documentary from France Culture Nightsbroadcast in 1993, Madeleine Riffaud recounted the origins of her commitment.
In 1941, first exiled in Limousin, she returned to Picardy with her grandparents. “When we arrived at Amiens station, it was night and there were lots of German soldiers there. Maybe good guys, I don't know, but they had a foreign uniform and they were talking very strong“, she remembered.
“I had to step over these thugs. It was the first time I thought I could become resistant, because they tried to play with me, because I had a little skirt, hair on my shoulders, I was pretty cute, she said. And like all thugs in the world, they wanted to play. I'm not saying they wanted to do more, but I was afraid. There was one who got tired of playing and gave me a big kick in the behind. And there, under the influence of pain, but above all humiliation, I thought, it's not possible to admit it, in any case I, little one, didn't admit it.” It was at this moment that she decided to join the Resistance, at only 16 years old.
She kills a German soldier
Arriving later in Paris, “his first resistance action consisted, at the end of 1942, of drawing inscriptions in chalk on the walls of rue de l'École-de-Médecine in the Latin Quarter”tell the Maitron dictionary. In July 1944, Madeleine Riffaud left on her bicycle and, armed with a revolver, she killed a German soldier on the Solferino bridge. She was arrested a few moments later and then tortured by the Gestapo.
War correspondent
After the Second World War, Madeleine Riffaud became a journalist and covered several conflicts in her career. For example, she recounts the wars of decolonization, such as in Indochina.
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To mark the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of the Somme this year, the city of Amiens inaugurated the Placette Madeleine Riffaud.
A comic strip in his honor
His story was told in a comic strip by the designer Dominique Bertail and the screenwriter from Reims, Jean-David Morvan. “Resistant Madeleine”. The comic strip received, in 2022, the Goscinny Prize for best screenplay.
This heroine of the resistance was also highlighted in 2023 by an exhibition at the Château de Malbrouck in Moselle, entitled “She resists, they resist”.
Emma Dehoey
