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Identifier

ms109-0125

Collection Number

Margaret Collins Weitz Papers, 1945-2006 (MS109)

Description

This is a transcript of one of the interviews conducted by Margaret Collins Weitz for her book, Sisters in the Resistance: How Women Fought to Free France, 1940-1945 (1995). French résistante and journalist Hélène Rénal discusses her pre- and post-war life, focusing mainly on her participation in the French Resistance during WWII. The interview starts with what it was like to grow up in a bourgeois, Jewish background in 1930s Paris, France. Then Rénal describes her involvement in the French Resistance in Savoie, including her early work distributing flyers and making false identity cards; the challenges of coding and decoding telegrams in the “Transmission-Action” information network; how her association with her husband, who was head of a Resistance network, resulted in her arrest; the story of her interrogation and her husband’s interrogation by Klaus Barbie; her covert travels between Savoie and Paris by train as secretary to the head of the network; her imprisonment at Ravensbrück, a concentration camp in Germany; her time immediately after the war in the occupied territory of Tyrol, Austria. She also discussed aspects of her post-war life including writing a book with a group of friends from Ravensbrück; and how she became a journalist, working at Elle and Marie-Claire. She ends by reflecting on the path of her life and the certain people that influenced her and gave her opportunities, including Michel Lévy who worked at the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies.

Subject Heading

World War, 1939-1945--Women; World War, 1939-1945--Underground movements--France; World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, French

Date

7-8-1983

Document Type

Document

Keywords

WWII; Women in the French Resistance

Disciplines

European History | Military History | Women's History

Sisters in the Resistance: transcript of interview with Hélène Renal (English version)

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