2024-11-06 18:05:00
Protégé of Éluard having known Picasso and Aragon, the resistance fighter Madeleine Riffaud, who died at the age of 100, was a poet, journalist and war correspondent for l’Humanité and devoted her life to denouncing injustices, believing she had to pay a “ debt of survival “. For fifty years, however, she remained silent about her years of resistance where she had escaped death several times, unlike many of her comrades.
“I am a fighter”
It was the resistance fighter Raymond Aubrac who shook it up in the 1990s: “ Are you going to keep shutting up? Your friends who were shot at 17, don’t you care if no one talks about it? “, she told AFP. She then toured the schools and answered interviews. At 100 years old, she signs Tomato noodlesthe third volume of his war memoirs in comics, published in August. “ To resist is to love people, not to hate. (…) If we held on, it’s because instead of saying to ourselves, I’m a victim, we always said to ourselves, I’m a resistance fighter, I’m a fighter! »
Born on August 23, 1924 in Arvillers in the Somme, this only daughter of teachers joined the resistance at 16 years old. A student midwife in Paris, she became a liaison agent with her fellow communists from the Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP) at the medical faculty. She becomes “Rainer” – in homage to the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke – to mean that she “ is not at war against the German people but against the Nazis “. The massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane, a village of his youth decimated in June 1944, provoked his passage to arms. On July 23, she shot a Nazi officer twice in the head on the Solferino bridge. “ I had taken up the weapons of pain, as Paul Éluard would have said. I was in a lot of pain inside, I shot him almost point blank, he fell like a sack of wheat. »
Depression and tuberculosis
The resistance fighter was arrested almost immediately. Tortured by the Gestapo, she was sentenced to death and then deported. With a spy friend, she jumps from the train towards Ravensbrück but is intercepted. Thanks to the Swedish consul, she was released on August 19 thanks to an exchange of prisoners, in the midst of the Liberation of Paris. Rainer resumed the fight: on August 23, she contributed to the arrest of 80 German soldiers in the attack on a train in Buttes-Chaumont. She will receive the Croix de Guerre with palm.
After the Liberation, she wanted to join the army but was not 21 years old. His commitment ends there. Without news of her deported friends, haunted by the memory of the jails, she plunges into depression. Touched by her distress, Éluard takes her under his wing, prefaces his collection of poems The closed fist (1945). He takes her to Picasso who paints her – a determined little face framed by thick brown hair – and introduces her to the writer Vercors.
Social criticism
Suffering from tuberculosis, she meets Pierre Daix, a survivor of Mauthausen, in a sanatorium. They get married and have a daughter who is placed with her grandparents for fear of tuberculosis. They separated in 1947. Only one profession was indicated then, it was war reporting for the most suffering “, she confided once she became an old woman who was almost blind. It begins at This eveninga communist newspaper edited by Aragon. Then for Humanity, she covered the war in Indochina where Ho Chi Minh received her as “ his daughter ».
She goes clandestinely to Algeria where she escapes an attack by the OAS (Organization of the Secret Army). She denounces the torture practiced in Paris against FLN (National Liberation Front) activists. Then she returned to Vietnam and covered the war for seven years. On her return, she worked as a nursing assistant in a Parisian hospital and denounced in The Cloths of the Night(1974), sold a million copies, the misery of Public Assistance.
Fifty years later, she reiterates the same criticisms. After remaining twenty-four hours left to her own devices on an emergency stretcher, she sent an open letter to the director of the AP-HP in 2022. “ Did they think I was too old to be worth treating me for? (…) Raymond Aubrac asked me to be a voice of the Resistance – so I will be. I still have a little strength, I have to give it away. »
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Ughter, but their marriage faces difficulties exacerbated by her health issues and the lingering trauma of war. Aubrac’s life becomes a blend of personal struggles and social engagement as she critiques society and advocates for peace.
Her experiences during the war deeply influenced her views on justice and human rights, leading her to participate in various causes throughout her life. Even in later years, she remained vocal about the importance of remembering history and fighting against oppression.
In her memoirs, she emphasizes resilience and the need for compassion, stating, “To resist is to love people, not to hate.” Her life story serves as a testament to the courage of those who stood up against tyranny and the lasting impact of their struggles on future generations.
As she celebrates her hundredth birthday and continues to share her experiences, she reminds us of the importance of remembering the past to shape a better future.
