In connection with the Liberation Mission and in continuity with the Great Cause of the Quinquennium, the Government has chosen today to recall the importance of women in the Resistance.
The objective here is to highlight the female figures, known or more confidential, who distinguished themselves 80 years ago through their courage and without whom the Liberation would not have been possible.
From assistance to allies and illegal immigrants, to the role of liaison agents and even network leaders, they worked at all levels throughout the national territory, although they would have to wait until 1944. to participate fully in French democratic life.
However, although these women took extreme risks to participate in the Liberation, their recognition was difficult and late, especially since many of them resumed their lives after the war without asserting their rights. They represent less than 10% of the members of the Medalists of the Resistance and there are only six to be part of the order of the Companions of the Liberation which has more than a thousand members.
However, the entry into the Pantheon, in 2015, of Germaine Tillion and Geneviève Anthonioz-De Gaulle, joined 6 years later by Joséphine Baker, confirmed that their commitment was now better recognized by the Nation.
Also, the prefecture of Côte-d’Or pays tribute to them and particularly remembers:
- Albertine Bonnet (Dijon):
An intelligence service agent, from 1941, she saved some of her comrades on the verge of being arrested in 1943. In 1944, she was arrested following a denunciation and then tortured. She is sentenced to death but manages to escape the day before her execution.
- Juliette Dubois (Dijon):
She participated in the reconstitution of clandestine communist cells at work, in barracks and among women. She campaigned in Côte-d’Or under her real identity until the end of 1940, then in Saône-et-Loire and in Yonne until April 1941, before being put in charge of women’s work in the occupied zone under the name of Marguerite until August 1941, then in the free zone under the name Madeleine until November 26, 1941, the date of her arrest. She was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 1942 and was deported on May 30, 1944 to Ravensbrück. After the war, she continued to campaign both nationally and locally within the authorities of the Communist Party.
- Madeleine Dubois (Dijon):
In 1940-1941 she was in charge of the underground communist press under the pseudonym Ginette. Between April 1942 and February 1943, illegally, she provided inter-regional liaison (under the pseudonym Denise) in Doubs, Haute-Saône, Belfort. She became liaison agent in the inter-region including Côte-d’Or, Saône-et-Loire, Yonne and Marne then in Paris, liaison agent for Marcel Hamon, head of the FTPF intelligence service at nationally. She then became secretary to the national directorate of the FFI.
In May 1945, she was assigned as an editor to the Central Political Control Commission (CCCP) and returned to service in the clandestine apparatus of the Communist Party. After the war, she returned to her job as a kindergarten teacher (Troyes).
- Marie-Louise Ganimède (Velars-sur-Ouche):
Mother of a fighter in the French forces of the interior, she took one of the most active roles in the Drôme Resistance movement. From 1940, she was active in anti-German and anti-Vichy propaganda and then devoted her entire life to the Maquis du Vercors, helping military organizers by ensuring the transport of weapons, supplies and medicines. During the Maquis attack, she refused to abandon the wounded evacuated to the Luire cave, where she was arrested in July 1944. Incarcerated in Grenoble, she managed to escape from the Gestapo premises and immediately joined the fighters. of Drôme taking part in the battles which led to the liberation of the town of Romans.
- Blanche Grenier-Godard (born in Jura, she acted exclusively as a Resistance fighter in Dijon):
From 1940 until her arrest in 1942, she founded and directed, with the help of her minor sons, an intelligence and smuggler network of 400 resistance fighters who managed to help 8,000 resistance fighters, prisoners, Jews and other escapees to cross into the free zone. His action was recently honored in Dijon with an alley bearing his name in the Valmy district, inaugurated in the presence of his son Jean.
- Denise Lamirault (Dijon):
Member of the Jade-Fitzroy internal Resistance network, founded by her husband Claude Lamirault, she parachuted twice into France as a radio operator. After her husband’s arrest in December 1943 in Paris, she took charge of the network until her arrest in April 1944, following which she was deported. She will be repatriated upon liberation.
(Communicated)
