At the outbreak of World War II Lecoq worked as a nurse with the Red Cross. She was also affiliated with the French resistance movement.[1] She was arrested in 1942 and held one year in isolation, and then brought to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1943,[2] as a Nacht und Nebel prisoner.[1] She worked as a nurse at block ten, the block for tuberculous and mentally ill.[2] From this hut she witnessed the murder of women who were not longer capable of working.[1] Lecoq managed to organize pencil and paper, and made several illustrations from the life in the camp, with the intention of publishing the drawings some day.[2]
She was evacuated with the Swedish Red Cross in April 1945.[1] In 1946, she was a witness at the Ravensbrück Trials in Hamburg, along with Odette Sansom, Irène Ottemard, Jaqueline Hereil, Helene Dziedziecka, Neeltje Epker and others.[2] Her drawings were used as evidence at the trials.[3]
In 1948 she published Ravensbrück, 36 dessins à la plume, a collection of her drawings from the Ravensbrück camp. The drawings are pencil sketches from the "everyday life" in the camp. Examples are the series "-Welcome...",[4] and "Deux heures après",[5] showing individual women entering the camp, and the transition two hours later. The drawing "La loi du plus fort..." (in English: The law of the strongest) shows the humiliation of the prisoners by brutality from the staff.[6]
Several of her illustrations had been included in Sylvia Salvesen's book Tilgi – men glem ikke from 1947.[7] Some of the illustrations were later included in Kristian Ottosen's book on Ravensbrück from 1991.[8]
Lecoq was awarded the French Resistance medal, and the French Croix de guerre.[1] She died in Paris in 2003.
↑Ottosen, Kristian (1995) [First published 1991]. Kvinneleiren. Historien om Ravensbrück-fangene (in Norwegian). Oslo: Aschehoug. pp.84–86, 209, 264, 304.
