Cécile Cerf

During World War II, Cerf played an active role in the Main-d'œuvre immigrée groups under the aegis of the FTP-MOI resistance movement.

Elder daughter of Moshe Shalit, Cécile Cerf spoke several languages, and at the age of 14, without fear of the violent repression, she joined the student revolutionary action against the Polish military dictatorship.

After a brief time at the Lycée Victor-Duruy, her political convictions drove her to abandon her studies in order to live an authentic working-class life.

In December 1942, she joined the ranks of the Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTPF), a grouping which subsumed the French Forces of the Interior, in the Paris region.

She stood out particularly for her participation in the arms and supplies transports which allowed the realization of several operations, notably that of 17 January 1944 when a train carrying enemy troops was derailed near Bellay.

[2] After the war, Cécile Cerf co-founded the Commission Centrale de l'Enfance along with six other resistance members from the Union des juifs pour la Résistance et l'Entraide (UJRE) associated with the MNCR.

Cécile Cerf translated many novels by both classical and modern Yiddish authors totally unknown to the French public for the Presse Nouvelle Hebdomadaire (PNH).