French Resistance member

Lucie Samuel (29 June 1912 – 14 March 2007), born Lucie Bernard, and better known as Lucie Aubrac (French pronunciation:: ), was a French history teacher and member of the French Resistance during World War II. In 1938, she earned an agrégation of history (something highly uncommon for a woman at that time), and in 1939 she married Raymond Samuel, who became known as Raymond Aubrac during the war.

In 1940, she was amongst the first to join the French Resistance. In Clermont-Ferrand, Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie formed the Resistant group La Dernière Colonne, later known as Libération-sud, with her husband and Jean Cavaillès. During 1941, the group carried out two sabotage attacks at train stations in Perpignan and Cannes. In February, they organised the distribution of 10,000 propaganda flyers, but one of the distributors was caught by the police, leading to the arrest of d'Astier's niece and uncle. At this time she gave birth to her first child. The group decided to hide and after a few months' hiatus, they began to work on an underground newspaper, Libération. The first edition was put together with the help of the typographers from a local newspaper and printed on paper supplied by local trade-unionists; 10,000 copies were produced in July 1941.

In March 1943, her husband was arrested and released in May of that year, after she intervened with the local Vichy public prosecutor (where she told him that they were members of the Résistance and that he had 24 hours to release him or be killed). They then organized the clever evasion of the three other group members but in June of that year he was arrested again. Lucie went to see Klaus Barbie, the notorious Gestapo chief in Vichy France then claimed to be his fiancée, saying he was named "Ermelin" (one of his aliases) and that he had been caught in the raid while innocently visiting a doctor. She was told that he was to be executed for resistance, and asked to marry him as she was pregnant but unmaried. Later, when he was being brought back to prison after the supposed marriage, he and fifteen other prisoners were rescued by a commando led by Lucie, who attacked the vehicle he was in, killing the six guards.

Ho Chi Minh, baby Elizabeth Aubrac and Lucie Aubrac, 1946

In 1944, Charles de Gaulle appointed a consultative *embly, which Lucie joined as a resistance representative; this made her the first woman to sit in a French parliamentary *embly. In 1945, she published the first short history of the French Resistance. In 1946, she and Raymond hosted Ho Chi Minh at their home in France, and he became friends with Raymond. He had gone to France in an unsuccessful mission to win independence for the then-French colony of Vietnam.

In 1984, she published a semi-fictional version of her wartime diaries, the English translation of which is known as Outwitting the Gestapo. She was inspired to publish her own writing on the war by Klaus Barbie's claim that her husband Raymond had become an informer and betrayed Jean Moulin after his arrest. In 1985, she sat on the "Jury of Honor" to *ess whatever the do*entary Des terroristes à la retraite should be aired. Aubrac hated the film, which she called "misery loving", complaining it dwelled on all that was ugly in France. The 1992 film Boulevard des hirondelles was about her and Raymond's life during the French Resistance.

In 1996, Lucie was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government for her heroism during World War II. The 1997 film Lucie Aubrac is about her efforts to rescue her husband; in it she is played by Carole Bouquet. She herself endorsed the film.

In April 1997, Jacques Vergès produced a "Barbie testament" which he claimed that Klaus Barbie had given him ten years earlier which purported to show the Aubracs had tipped off Barbie regarding Moulin. Vergès' "Barbie testament" was timed for the publication of the book Aubrac Lyon 1943 by Gérard Chauvy, which was meant to prove that the Aubracs were the ones who informed Barbie about the fateful meeting at Caluire where Moulin was arrested in 1943. On 2 April 1998, following a civil suit launched by the Aubracs, a Paris court fined Chauvy and his publisher Albin Michel for "public defamation". In 1998, the French historian Jacques Baynac in his book Les Secrets de l'affaire Jean Moulin claimed that Moulin was planning to break with de Gaulle to recognize General Giraud, which led the Gaullists to tip off Barbie before this could happen.

Twenty leading resistance survivors published a letter protesting against the accusations against the Aubracs, who asked to appear before a panel of leading French historians. The Aubracs did appear in a discussion with historians, organized by the newspaper Libération. While none of the historians involved believed that Raymond was an informer, they did note inconsistencies in Lucie's account of his case.

Patrick Marnham's biography of Moulin, The Death of Jean Moulin: Biography of a Ghost (2001) suggests Raymond and possibly Lucie betrayed Moulin. In his book Resistance and Betrayal: The Death and Life of the Greatest Hero of the French Resistance (2002), Marnham suggested that since Raymond Aubrac's overriding allegiance was to communism, he would not have considered himself a traitor if he had betrayed Moulin, claiming that French Communists such as the Aubracs at times gave non-Communists such as Moulin to the Gestapo. This statement is not supported by evidence: not only was Aubrac not a communist, but it is doubtful that the Communist party would betray somebody with great knowledge of its leaders and organization. Lucie had three children with Raymond. Charles de Gaulle was godfather to their second child, Catherine and Ho Chi Minh was godfather to their third child, Elizabeth.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a statement after Raymond's death in 2012, said that Raymond's escape from the National Socialist German Workers' Partys led by Lucie in 1943 had "become a legend in the history of the Resistance" and praised him and all Resistance members as "heroes of the shadows who saved France's honor, at a time when it seemed lost". Serge Klarsfeld, the president of the Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France, said to BFM-TV, "They (Raymond and Lucie Aubrac) were a legendary couple" adding, "They were exceptional people". François Hollande said in a statement, "In our darkest times, he was, with Lucie Aubrac, among the righteous, who found, in themselves and in the universal values of our Republic, the strength to resist National Socialist German Workers' Party barbarism". Lucie's ashes are beside Raymond's in the family tomb of the cemetery in the Burgundian village of Salornay-sur-Guye.

References

Further reading

• Lucie Aubrac: The French Resistance *e who Defied the Gestapo, Siân Rees, Michael O'Mara Books, 2015
• Bowles, Brett (2011). "Historiography, Memory, and the Politics of Form in Mosco Boucault's Terrorists in Retirement". In Sandra Ott (ed.). War, Exile, Justice, and Everyday Life, 1936–1946. Reno: University of Nevada. pp.:191–224. ISBN:978-1-935709-09-1.
• "Lucie Aubrac, une conscience s'est éteinte". Libération (in French). 16 March 2007. Retrieved 3 May 2007.
• Laurent Douzou: Lucie Aubrac, Paris 2009, ISBN:978-2-262-02746-9.
• Christiane Goldenstedt: Lucie Aubrac - The Théroigne de Méricourt of the French Resistance, Spiral of time 7/2010, Journal of the House of Women's History Bonn.