France: Icon of resistance to Nazi occupation dies at 100

France

Iconic resistance fighter to Nazi occupation dies at 100

Odette Nils, a communist nicknamed “Guy Moquette’s fiancee,” died on the night of Friday to Saturday.

Published

After the war, Odette Nils remained true to communist ideals throughout her life and campaigned for women’s rights.

AFP

Communist Odette Nils was an iconic protester during the French occupation. The NazisDied at 100 p.m. Friday to Saturday, President Emmanuel Macron embodied “a century of commitment and freedom.”

Arrested by the French police in August 1941

“Odette Niles represented a century of commitment and freedom. We will continue to advance her memory,” the French head of state said on Twitter.

Born in Paris on December 27, 1922 and a member of the Young Communists from 1940, he distributed leaflets and participated in demonstrations during the occupation before being arrested by the French police in August 1941.

He was then transferred to an internment camp in the Lower-Atlantic (West), where he met another famous anti-communist, Guy Moquet, who was hanged along with 47 other prisoners. She promises him a kiss she can never give, at the “barrier,” the boundary between men and women. Guy Môquet’s final message is also to Odette: “I am going to die without having what you promised me (…)”.

Odette Nils in the Seisel concentration camp in 1941.

AFP

Loyal to his communist ideals

Odette Nils, nicknamed “Guy Moquette’s fiancee,” was interned for more than three years in several camps as far west as Merignac in France, from where she escaped in 1944 to join the resistance in Bordeaux. After the war, Odette Nils remained true to communist ideals throughout her life and campaigned for women’s rights. “She never stopped giving children her story, our story, the values ​​of these women and men,” congratulated Fabian Roussel, national secretary of the Communist Party of France. was losing “a great figure of resistance”.

(AFP)

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