Suzanne Bertillon

Suzanne Bertillon (23 June 1891 – 8 October 1980) was a prominent French figure before and during World War II, whose various roles included decorator, journalist, lecturer, and resistance fighter.

[9][10] In the company of young men and women from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,[11] she traveled to the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, and later recounted her impressions at conferences in France and Switzerland,[a][13][14][15] as well as in the right-wing daily Le Matin, in articles published in 1932 entitled "Anticommunistes du monde entier, unissez-vous!

"[16] At the time, she was close to Henri Bourgoin's xenophobic and anti-communist "Association des travailleurs français", opposed to class struggle and Marxism, and spoke at several of its meetings between 1932 and 1934, mentioning in particular her stay in the USSR.

[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] Bertillon's two August 1933 articles in Le Matin on the plight of the famine-stricken Ukrainian people were the first in France to alert readers to the scale of the famine in this Soviet territory.

[37] In 1936, Bertillon received a 15-day suspended prison sentence for incitement to murder, following violent remarks made against members of the government at a conference in Meurthe-et-Moselle.

[38] The following year, on appeal, she received a one-month suspended prison sentence for threatening to kill two Popular Front figures, radical-socialist Édouard Herriot and socialist Joseph Paul-Boncour, during a political conference of the Parti National Populaire (the new name for the JP) in Nice in 1936.

In that same year, under the Occupation, Bertillon headed the foreign newspaper censorship department at the Ministry of Information,[47] with the support of her uncle René Gillouin.

Dès l’invasion de la zone sud, Suzanne avait tenté d’intégrer les services secrets américains.

Se sachant étroitement surveillé par la Gestapo, il conseille à son amie – aux multiples pseudonymes tels que Camille, Oncle Sébastien, Claude Montsoreau ou encore Christine – de cesser ses visites au laboratoire de police, consigne qu’elle respectera jusqu’à la Libération.

» (After writing a most favorable review of Bertillon's biography, Locard meets Suzanne again for a completely different project: joining the Hi-Hi resistance network.

Knowing he was being closely monitored by the Gestapo, he advised his friend – with multiple pseudonyms such as Camille, Uncle Sébastien, Claude Montsoreau and Christine – to stop her visits to the police laboratory, an instruction that she respected until the Liberation.)