Lucie Aubrac, one of the great figures of the French Resistance, has passed away yesterday at the age of 94.
Lucie Aubrac was born Lucie Bernard on June 29 , 1912 in the region of Mâcon. Before the war, she studied History at the Sorbonne University from which she received the highest teaching diploma. She then started to teach History.
As soon as 1940, she engaged in the Resistance in Lyon with her husband, Raymond Aubrac and she contributed to the founding of one of the first resistance movements, Liberation-South. Together with Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie, they founded one of the most important clandestine newspapers: Libération. As the head of an armed commando, she carried out, among other actions, a military action to liberate her husband from the hands of SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie, head of the Gestapo in Lyon. After the success of this operation, the couple left France in February 1944 to join de Gaulle in London and then in Algiers.
After the war, in 1945, when the French women obtained the voting rights for the first time, she created the Privilège newspaper of women, which lasted for a few months. She was a member of the Consultative Assembly resulting from the Resistance and charged with supervising the Departmental Committees of Liberation. She then resumed the teaching of History and kept campaigning for Human Rights. After she retired from teaching, Lucie Aubrac kept relentlessly going to high-schools to explain the resistance to the students.
Lucie Aubrac published several books, among which was one published in 1984, “They left, wild with joy”, an account of the escape that she organized to liberate her husband from Klaus Barbie.
Contrary to what those who think the European Union was created by the Anglo-Saxon neoliberals claim, many of the ideas which were implemented in Europe came from the French National Resistance Council Programme written clandestinely in 1944.
Here is an appeal Lucie Aubrac signed, together with 12 other former resistance fighters in 2004 for the 60th anniversary of the French National Resistance Council: Video (in French) where her husband Raymond Aubrac appears.
Here is the text:
The Appeal of Resistance Fighters
At the time when we see the foundation of the social conquests of the Liberation being called into question, we, veterans of the Resistance movements and the fighting forces of France Libre (1940-1945), call on the younger generations to animate and retransmit the heritage of the Resistance and its still current ideals of economic, social, and cultural democracy.
Sixty years later, Nazism is defeated, thanks to the sacrifice of our brothers and sisters of the Resistance and the nations united against fascist barbarity. But this menace did not completely disappear, and our anger against injustice is still intact.
From our conscience comes this appeal to celebrate the topicality of the Resistance, neither in support of partisan causes nor instrumentalized by some stake of power, but to propose to the generations which will succeed us to achieve three acts which are humanist and profoundly political in the true sense of the term, so that the flame of the Resistance will never be extinguished.
First, we appeal to teachers, social movements, public collectives, creators, citizens, the exploited, the humiliated, to celebrate together the anniversary of the program of the National Council of the Resistance (C.N.R.) adopted in the underground on 15 March 1944: Social security and generalized pensions, control of “economic feudalisms,” the right to culture and education for all, the press freed from money and corruption, labour and agricultural social laws, etc.
How can it be that today money to maintain and extend these social conquests cannot be found, while the production of wealth has increased considerably since the Liberation, the period when Europe lay in ruin? The political, economic, and intellectual leaders, and society as a whole, should neither resign themselves to nor allow themselves to be impressed by the current international dictatorship of financial markets which threatens peace and democracy.
We therefore call on the movements, parties, associations, institutions, and unions that are heirs to the Resistance to rise above the sectoral stakes, and to devote themselves first of all to the political causes of social injustices and social conflicts, no longer solely to their consequences, in order to define together a new “Program of the Resistance” for our century, recognizing that fascism always feeds on racism, intolerance, and war, which themselves feed on social injustices.
We call finally on children, young people, parents, old people, grandparents, teachers, public authorities, to raise a true peaceful insurrection against the mass media which offer, as the horizon for our youth, only commercial consumption, contempt for the weakest and for culture, generalized amnesia, and excessive competition of all against all. We do not accept that the principal media from now on are controlled by private interests, contrary to the program of the National Council of the Resistance and to the ordinances on the press of 1944.
More than ever, to those who will create the century that is just beginning, we want to say with our affection:
“To create is to resist. To resist is to create.”
Signatories:
Lucie Aubrac, Raymond Aubrac, Henri Bartoli, Daniel Cordier, Philippe Dechartre, Georges Guingouin, Stephan Hessel, Maurice Kriegel-Valrimont, Lise London, Georges Séguy, Germaine Tillion, Jean-Pierre Vernant, Maurice Voutey.
“When the government violates the rights of the people, the insurrection is, for the people and each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most essential of duties.” Article 35. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 24 June 1793
Thank you, Lucie.
