Gisèle Guillemot
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Mondeville, France
FranceGisèle Guillemot | |
|---|---|
 Gisèle Guillemot | |
| Born | 24 February 1922 Mondeville, France |
| Died | 1 February 2013 (aged 90) |
| Allegiance | France |
| Service | French Resistance |
| Years of service | 1940–1945 |
| Battles / wars | World War II |
Gisèle Guillemot (24 February 1922 – February 2013) was an award-winning French writer and a member of the French Resistance during the World War II.
Gisèle Guillemot was born and brought up at Mondeville in the Calvados region; her mother was from Normandy and her father was Italian.[1]
Wartime activities
Aged 18 when the Germans occupied France in 1940, Guillemot worked as a shorthand typist. She became politically active and was a Communist sympathiser.[2] By spring 1941 she was in charge of the "Front patriotique de la jeunesse" in Calvados. She joined the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, and was involved in sabotaging German trains during 1942 and 1943. On 9 April 1943 she was arrested, along with other members of her network.[3]
After a trial beginning in June,[4] she was condemned to death on 13 July 1943, along with fourteen men and one other woman, a teacher named Edmone Robert. All their male counterparts were shot, but Guillemot and Robert had their sentences commuted to imprisonment.[3] After a stay at Fresnes Prison, where Guillemot wrote poems in a notebook that she managed to smuggle past the authorities,[5] they were deported to prisons at Lübeck and Cottbus, and finally, under the "Nacht und Nebel" directive, to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where they arrived in the autumn of 1944. After a transfer to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, Guillemot was freed by the International Red Cross on 23 April 1945, and arrived back at Caen on 1 May. Her condition was such that she subsequently spent three months recuperating at a sanatorium in Switzerland.[3]
