French resistance hero Cécile Rol-Tanguy died on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. “She was one of the female faces of the French Resistance and the Liberation of Paris,” said Rol-Tanguy Élysée Palace on Saturday. She died at the age of 101 in Monteaux on Friday, the French news agency AFP reported, citing the family.
Rol-Tanguy joined the Resistance in 1940 when the Wehrmacht troops marched into Paris. She and her husband, the left-wing trade unionist Henri Rol-Tanguy, were central figures in the resistance to the Nazis and were instrumental in the liberation of Paris.
The couple lived underground during the occupation, writing leaflets and using reports on their strollers to hide weapons. “On August 19, 1944, it was she who wrote her husband’s call for the uprising of the Parisians,” the Presidential Palace said. They coordinated the resistance from an underground headquarters at Place Denfert-Rochereau in the south of the French capital.
On August 25, 1944, the Nazi rule in Paris ended, which had lasted over four years. A day later, Rol-Tanguy was the only woman at the reception organized by General Charles De Gaulle in thanks to the leaders of the Paris Résistance.
“The President of the Republic bows to the life of this freedom fighter and expresses his condolences to her children and grandchildren, her relatives and her companions,” said the President’s Palace. “As a figure of resistance and liberation, she is a great woman who leaves us on this symbolic day,” said French President François Hollande. Rol-Tanguy was the recipient of the highest awards in the French state and was an eyewitness to schools in old age. Her husband Henri died in 2002. (apa / dpa)
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