Gemaine Tillion

Personal

Vocation

Lifestyle

Notable

Traits

French ethnologist. During the World War II Tillion was a Resistance activist. She became one of the leading commanders in the French Resistance in the network of the Musée de l'Hommein Paris. Her missions included helping prisoners to escape and organizing intelligence for the allied forces from 1940 to 1942. She was arrested in 1942 and was interned (1943–45) in Ravensbrück but managed to hide detailed notebooks of her observations on life in the camp. She later used the surviving notebooks as the basis for a satiric operetta, Le Verfügbar aux Enfers(“The Campworker Goes to Hell”), but she refused to allow it to be performed until 2007, soon after her 100th birthday. Against incredible odds, She was one of only about 3,500 survivors liberated in April 1945 from Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp. After graduating (1932) with a degree in anthropology from the Ethnology Institute, Tillion traveled extensively throughout Algeria until 1940, when she returned to Paris and joined a Resistance cell based at the Musée de l’Homme. In the 1950s Tillion, who vocally opposed the use of torture in Algeria, unsuccessfully sought to negotiate better relations between the independence-minded colony and France. She undertook 20 scientific missions in North Africa and the Middle East. She was awarded Grand-croix de la Légion d'honneur (Only five women ever received this award.), among the other awards Tillion was an astute observer of human behaviour, a staunch defender of human rights and fierce critic of violence. She died 18 April 2008, Saint-Mandé, France. age 101. Link to Wikipedia biography