A Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France
July 7, 2008
Translated into English after more than 60 years of near-obscurity, Humbert’s firsthand account of her work for the resistance in occupied Paris and her subsequent arrest and deportation to a forced-labor camp in Germany is an invaluable addition to works highlighting the role of women during wartime. At the fall of Paris, Humbert verges on despondency until she hears de Gaulle’s broadcast calling for all Frenchmen to carry on the struggle. Prompted to action, she begins networking, bringing together some of the key figures of the resistance, including Boris Vildé and Pierre Brossolette, with whose help she and others produce the underground liberation newspaper, Résistance
. But the indelibility of the human spirit is most fully revealed in Humbert’s account of her imprisonment, during which she retains her dignity amid the humiliating circumstances through small, individual acts of resistance such as sabotaging the work she does in the labor camps. She also provides heartfelt testament to numerous other women in the prison, many of whom were arrested for helping French and British soldiers escape. In a fair-minded account, Humbert relays the atrocities of the Third Reich as well as the sympathy of some of the camp inmates’ captors