Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

France's Macron leads tributes to World War II Resistance activist and author Geneviève Callerot

France’s president has paid homage to former French Resistance activist and author Geneviève Callerot, who has died aged 108

Via AP news wire
Saturday 18 January 2025 17:03 EST
France Macron
France Macron (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

France's President Emmanuel Macron has paid tribute to former French Resistance activist and author Geneviève Callerot, who has died aged 108.

Callerot, who was among the last survivors of the groups that combatted the country’s World War II occupation by Nazi Germany, died Thursday in a care home in Saint-Aulaye-Puymangou, a town in the Dordogne region of southwestern France where she had lived since childhood, according to local media reports.

A statement from the presidential Elysée Palace said Macron offered “his heartfelt condolences to her loved ones, to all those who were illuminated by her solar presence, and finally to those whose lives she saved.”

Callerot “takes with her a little piece of France, a certain France that is tough on suffering and intimidation, tender toward the beauty of the world, as quick to raise its fist in the face of oppression as it is to extend its hand,” the statement said.

Born in 1916, Callerot was 24 when France surrendered to Adolf Hitler's invasion forces in June 1940, an event “which forever marked her life and revealed her to herself,” the statement said.

It said she and her family joined a Resistance network that smuggled people across the demarcation line that separated Nazi-occupied areas that included Paris, northern France and the country's Atlantic seaboard and the so-called free zone governed by the French Vichy administration that collaborated with the Nazi occupiers.

She participated in the escape of 200 men and women, including Jews and American and British war-wounded, “whose lives she saved with anonymous heroism, and who often never knew what they owed to this teenager,” Macron's office said. It said German forces took her into custody three times — twice releasing her for lack of evidence and holding her in prison for several weeks the third time.

She and her husband worked as farmers after the war.

When she was 67 she published her first novel — “Les cinq filles du Grand-Barrail,” or “The five girls of Grand-Barrail” — about a family of sharecroppers.

___

This story has been corrected to show Callerot was 24-year-old in 1940 and not 14 as wrongly mentioned in the Elysée statement.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in