Key points
- 01 In 1943, in Lyon, her husband Raymond was arrested by Klaus Barbie’s Gestapo.
- 02 On 21 October 1943, she organised an attack on a prison transport van that freed her husband and thirteen other resistance fighters.
- 03 After the war, she cared for the children of fallen resistance members and continued sharing her story until her death.
FRANCE UNDER OCCUPATION
In 1940, defeated France was divided in two: an area occupied by Germany in the north and a so-called Free Zone in the south, governed by the Vichy regime. In Lyon, where the Aubracs lived, Klaus Barbie’s Gestapo hunted down underground networks that refused to accept defeat and occupation.
FROM TEACHER TO RESISTANCE FIGHTER
Born Lucie Bernard in Paris in 1912 to a modest farming family from the Mâconnais region, she became a history teacher. A member of the leadership circle of Libération-Sud, she forged false documents, helped resistance fighters cross the demarcation line, and contributed to the underground newspaper Libération.
RAYMOND’S FIRST ARREST
In March 1943, her husband Raymond was arrested by the Vichy regime’s police. Despite being pregnant, Lucie confronted the magistrate in charge of the case and pressured him until she secured Raymond’s temporary release. He was recaptured by the Gestapo a few months later.
THE ESCAPE FROM MONTLUC PRISON
Raymond was imprisoned in Montluc Prison and placed in the hands of Klaus Barbie. Posing as his fiancée, Lucie asked Barbie to allow a wedding in prison, and passed Raymond the escape plan. On 21 October 1943, her group attacked the German van taking her husband and thirteen other resistance fighters from Gestapo headquarters to Montluc, and freed them.
HER POSTWAR COMMITMENT
After the Liberation, she opened homes for the children of resistance fighters and devoted the rest of her life to speaking in schools. Until her death in 2007, she reminded people that the spirit of resistance belongs as much to the present as to the past.
« The verb ‘to resist’ is always conjugated in the present tense. »
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