June 29, 1912 – March 14, 2007
Occupied France, 1943. Lucie Aubrac stands face-to-face with a Gestapo officer. “I am here for my fiancé,” she announces.
Except this isn’t a love story. It’s a prison break.
Lucie and her comrades in Libération-Sud have exploited a legal loophole. She went to the barracks, a crying and pregnant woman begging for the chance to marry her beloved before he was brutally executed on the order of the infamous Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon.
This was common practice, a condemned man might make an honest woman of his wife-to-be, especially if, as in Lucie’s case, she was already pregnant with his child.
The French Resistance is familiar with this kind of operation. Lucie has everything timed to the last second: when the lorry is en route, armed resisters will ambush the convoy.
On Lucie and Raymond’s big day, everything goes according to plan: as the small van arrives, bang on cue, the French Resistance fighters surround the vehicle. The guards are overpowered. Raymond Aubrac and 15 other prisoners are hurried into waiting vehicles, the van abandoned, doors akimbo. The couple flee to London with their young son. Mission complete.
Lucie Aubrac was born Lucie Bernard on June 29, 1912, the daughter of Burgundy wine growers. She grew up hoping to become a teacher, working odd jobs in Paris while studying for the baccalaureate.
It was the political tensions of 1930s Paris that gave her the will to be socially and politically active. Witnessing events such as the 1934 Paris riots in her early 20s gave her a lived experience of how activism can change a city, how groups of people can unite and make a difference. With the city of light aflame with anti-fascist activity, Aubrac cut her revolutionary teeth in tabacs fomenting new ideas and radical solutions. She studied history at the Sorbonne, obtaining the agrégation in history and geography in 1938.
With a job teaching in a secondary school in Strasbourg, she met Raymond Samuel, an engineer and committed communist. The two were married in 1939, the year that war was declared in Europe. The idealistic young couple were united by a determination to contribute to the wider fight for freedom. Their moment came when France fell in 1940, leading to the installation of the collaborationist Vichy government in the south and Nazi rule in the north.
“Aubrac” was the nom de guerre of Raymond and Lucie, who took the name from the Aubrac plateau, a beautiful, mountainous region of southern France. With her newly adopted surname, Lucie Aubrac and other members of the Resistance movement formed a now legendary network of daring citizens who sought to undermine German rule and the Vichy government in the country’s south.
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Arranging to continue her teaching in Lyon, Aubrac was increasingly involved in underground activism. At a time when women were not entitled to the right to vote, Aubrac was leading a double life, helping distribute anti-Nazi newspapers and information. The consequences were severe; if caught they would be arrested and almost certainly killed. Despite the risks, Aubrac had a determination to fight the Nazi occupation and protect her fellow Resistance members. When her political leanings were discovered, she was relieved of her teaching duties, but this meant she had more time to devote to her increasing political activism.
In 1942, Barbie started to arrest Resistance fighters, condemning them to death or forcing them to become informants and betray the Resistance. Three times Raymond Aubrac was arrested, three times his wife helped him to escape, prepared to kill or do whatever it took in defence of what she thought was right.
When the war was over, Aubrac published a short history of the Resistance, the first written account available to the public, with her story of how France had been liberated. In later years she wrote her memoir, published in English as Outwitting the Gestapo. As with all Resistance stories, there have been disputes about the accuracy of some of what she reported. She was accused of exaggerations and embellishments. During the high times of the postwar purges, as neighbour turned against neighbour, there were even suggestions that the couple were double agents who betrayed the Resistance movement, a theory since discredited but which dented their reputation as heroes.
Aubrac’s importance was such that she was selected as a juror, representing the Resistance at the 1945 trial of Philippe Pétain, the architect of the Vichy regime. He was found guilty of treason and spent the rest of his days in prison. Barbie, who had imprisoned Aubrac’s husband in Lyon, was also brought to justice, sentenced to life imprisonment.
With her teaching licence restored after the war, the Aubracs travelled, with Lucie finding teaching jobs in Belgium, Italy and Morocco, where she spoke out about the Algerian War of Independence. She devoted her postwar life to keeping alive the memory of the Resistance, to tell of the atrocities of the second world war and campaigning against fascism. Like many former Resistance members, she began to see European imperialism differently, campaigning for the end of colonial regimes across the world and working with Amnesty International.
On the news of her death in 2007, President Jacques Chirac said “a light of the Resistance has gone out.” Nicolas Sarkozy paid homage to the bravery and courage of the Aubracs, describing them as “heroes of the shadows who saved France’s honour at a time when it appeared lost”.
In 1996, Lucie Aubrac received the Legion of Honour, France’s most prestigious medal, for helping to save the honour of France. She died at the age of 94, with three children and six grandchildren. The couple’s second child, Catherine – whose godfather was Charles de Gaulle – was born while her parents were in hiding in London. It came just weeks after one of the most daring moments of the French Resistance, when a heavily pregnant Lucie risked her life to free the husband she believed was about to be executed, and put her own life at risk to give him his freedom.
A trained historian, Lucie Aubrac herself made history, as a member of the French Resistance who went on to be an important voice against fascism and oppression across the world.
