In a residential area of Tours-Nord, where it builds all-out, a new street dead end has just been created, in the Sainte-Radegonde district. And she already has a name: Helena Fournier, whose plate was unveiled this Saturday, December 4 by the town hall, under the moved eyes of her granddaughter and her great-granddaughter, who bears the same first name as her.
Born in Cussay in 1904, Héléna Fournier is part of these women who sided with the resistance fighters during World War II. Under the German occupation, it joined the Libé-Nord network in Tours, for which it relayed messages, collected funds and housed escaped prisoners.
Deported among the convoy of 31,000
In October 1942, she was denounced by residents. Arrested by the police, she was taken to Romainville then to Compiègne, before being deported to Auschwitz on January 23, 1943, among the so-called “31,000” convoy. Transferred to Ravensbrück, she comes out alive from the hell of the camps in 1945 and returns to Touraine to run a grocery store with her husband.
It is this course which is worth to him today to be sharpened with a street. “To hear this story and to see his name given to a street, it makes me even more proud to bear his first name”, tells Héléna Toulousy-Michel, her great-granddaughter, who came with her mother expressly from the United States, where they live, for the inauguration of rue Héléna Fournier.
A book left to his family
Héléna Fournier did not immediately tell her family about her past. “I was very attached to her, but she never told me about her story, remembers Carole Toulousy-Michel, her granddaughter. I was asking about the tattoo she had on her arm, number 31.793, but she was just telling me that it was the work of German villains. That’s all I was entitled to. Because it was the moment of the reconstruction of France, of the post-war period. It was only necessary to speak of renewal, of beauty. And not horror. “
Before dying in Rochecorbon, in 1994, Héléna Fournier had left her family a notebook of memories on her life in the camps. Carole Toulousy-Michel only read it in the summer of 2021. “Of course, I already knew his story and thought I understood it. But in reality, what did I know about Auschwitz? Of the horror of the camps? I had to unearth this 250-page book to really know . I spent two months reading everything and I had the impression of living what she had lived, that is to say the abomination. And again, I do not even know if it exists one word to describe it. Today, I am relieved and happy to see the tribute paid to her. “
–
