Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Claire Chevrillon (1907-2011) ~ aka Christiane Clouet

Claire Chevrillon's parents were upper-class, assimilated Jews; her father, Andre Chevrillon, was a member of the French Academy, a man Edith Wharton called "the first literary critic in France.''

In 1942, as repressive laws limited Jewish freedom, Claire's mother was effectively imprisoned by her fear of leaving home wearing the yellow star. As her brother-in-law languished in a POW camp and her cousins were persecuted and eventually deported, Claire joined the resistance; first in air operations and then in the code service, where she encoded and decoded messages between the free French government in London and de Gaulle's Paris delegation. 

Claire, who had contact with some of the most prominent members of the Resistance, was betrayed in 1943 and spent four harrowing months in Fesnes Prison. She died on 12 October 2011.

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