Convoi des 31000
A number of women from the convoy testified against the Nazis after the war, wrote autobiographies, were awarded the Legion of Honour or were decreed to be Righteous Among the Nations.
In 1941 Otto von Stülpnagel introduced the Night and Fog directive (Nacht und Nebel) which provided for deporting "enemies of the Reich" to the eastern territories in order to isolate them from the rest of the world, forbidding them to make any communications with their families.
[1] This can be seen in a letter from Heinrich Himmler to members of the Gestapo: "After careful consideration, the will of the Führer is to modify the measures against those who are guilty of crimes against the Reich or against the German forces in the occupied territories.
"[2] Over the months, this practice was used against French people who were suspected of espionage, treason, aiding enemies of the Reich or illegal possession of weapons – all accusations which were liable for the death penalty.
[3] One of the first women in the convoy to arrive at the camp was Maria Alonso, a Spaniard, who was arrested for providing a mimeograph machine to resistance fighters.
Ten days later, she was joined by the young women involved in printing and distributing communist propaganda under Arthur Tintelin.
On 24 August, the women caught during the Politzer-Pican-Dallidet raid in Paris arrived, including Madeleine Dissoubray, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, Danielle Casanova, Charlotte Delbo and Madeleine Passot, as well as a young girl of sixteen, Rosa Floch, arrested for having written “Vive les Anglais” on the wall of her school.
Written in methylene blue on the wrapping paper of Red Cross parcels, it was titled Le Patriote de Romainville.
As in other prison camps, theatre became important for the women: Charlotte Delbo directed plays and Cécile Charua made the costumes.
Although the women did not know their final destination, they were apparently not afraid, as they believed being sent to work in a factory in Germany could not be worse than the cells of the Gestapo.
[5] In the crowded cattle trucks, the women set up a rotation system: half of them sitting, the others lying down and vice versa, their suitcases stacked around them.
[5] The following day after walking in the snow for two hours, the women are tasked with clearing a field with shovels, as part of the Birkenau Camp's expansion.
For sustenance they received half a litre of black coffee in the morning, thickened water as a soup at noon and 300g of bread in the evening, sometimes with margarine, jam, sausage or cheese.
Several women died, including: Berthe Lapeyrade, who refused to get up after falling in a swamp and was beaten to death; Alice Varailhon, shot by a guard; Annette Epaud, who was sent to Block 25 then to the gas chamber because she gave water to an inmate who was thirsty.
Rosa Floch, youngest in the convoy, then Andrée Tamisé, whose health had already been weakened by dysentery, and finally Claudine Guérin, who lost her mind because of the fever.
[7] Shortly after their arrival, five women from the convoy – Madeleine Dechavassine, Marie-Élisa Nordmann-Cohen, Hélène Solomon-Langevin, Laure Gatet and Alice Loeb – were sent to work in the Raisko Sub-camp.
It was run by an SS officer who was afraid of contagion and allowed women to be clean and remain in relatively good health.
Those who were most qualified in chemistry were assigned to the laboratory to do experiments, whilst others worked in the fields, took care of the plants or helped the chemists.
Around that time, the families of the deportees sent letters to the French Red Cross and to the government to ask for news of their loved ones following several other death notices arriving in France.
[1] Following these events – although no document has been found to prove it – the women in the Raisko sub-camp were allowed to write a letter in German to their French-speaking families.
[5] On their arrival, after a shower and a gynaecological examination, they received new outfits taken from the luggage of deportees and painted with large white crosses on the front and back.
One group, composed of Cécile Charua, Poupette Alizon, Carmen and Lucienne Thévenin and Gilberte Tamisé are put in a deportation convoy to Beendorf, a factory manufacturing V1 and V2 missiles located in a former salt mine 600m deep.
There, they performed small acts of sabotage: not tightening the screws, making holes too big, putting salt in the grease or even dropping the most fragile parts to break them.
As a result, the Jugendlager – a converted former annex camp – was opened to serve as a death centre for women too weak to work.
[5] On 22 April 1945, the 30 survivors of Mauthausen from the original 230 members of the convoy of women from the French Resistance were summoned and learned that the Red Cross had arrived to evacuate them.
[1] Adelaïde Hautval and Marie-Claude Vailant-Couturier decided to stay on site to take care of the sick and agreed to be repatriated only when their last patient had left the camp.
Betty Langlois testified during the trial of Fernand David, who had been Head of the Special Brigades in Paris, and who sent several members of the convoy to be deported.
[10] Annette Epaud also received the title of Righteous Among the Nations, posthumously in 1997, for having given water to the women dying in Block 25 of Auschwitz, including many Jews, an act which led to her being sent to the gas chamber a few days later.
[1] Regarding their professionals, there were four chemists (including Marie-Élise Nordmann-Cohen), three doctors (Maï Politzer, midwife; Danielle Casanova, dentist; and Adélaïde Hautval, psychiatrist), a teacher, 21 seamstresses, one singer and some students.
[1] In September 1943, when information on the fate of French women in the convoy began to circulate in resistance circles, Louis Aragon wrote a poem about them, which began: "Je vous salue, Maries des France aux cent visages" [Translation: "I salute you, Maries of France with a hundred faces"].
