In January 1943, the Corsican Resident Danielle Casanova saved a pregnant woman from deportation. 78 years later, her daughter came forward for the first time.
Isaline Amalric-Choury and Christiane Lauthelier have never met. Yet their lives have always been linked.
The first is the niece of the Resident Danielle Casanova, the second is the daughter of the Resident Marcelle Bastien. In the midst of World War II, the two women were imprisoned at Fort Romainville, requisitioned since 1940 by the Nazis and used as an internment and transit camp for deportation.
January 1943, the German soldiers organize a convoy. 231 women, Resistance fighters, are gathered in columns to be, they think, deported to Germany. Among them, Danielle Casanova and Marcelle Bastien, pregnant. “Danielle Casanova organized the Resistance in the camp, telling the women: ‘You don’t get on the trucks while Marcelle is in the column.’ They all listened to her and they didn’t move. The soldiers tried to push them with their rifles, but they resisted. The camp commander came down. I’ll use my mom’s words. After a good while of palaver, the commander pulled her out of the column. So I imagine he grabbed it with very little delicacy. We were lucky to stay in Romainville, Danielle Casanova saved our lives, especially when we know that this convoy was leaving for Auschwitz“, says Christiane Lauthelier.
–
Until now, for Isaline Amalric-Choury, the story ended there. “I always wondered what happened to this baby. Sometimes I even imagined it in America“, she confides.
A mysterious spray
On May 9, the day of the commemoration of the death of Danielle Casanova at the Auschwitz extermination camp, a ceremony was organized in Piana. Thanks to a wreath, the questions of Isaline Amalric-Choury found their answers. “At first, I didn’t pay attention to it. Then at the end of the ceremony, the mayor of Piana gave me a letter. It was written by a friend of Christiane and told the episode of January 43. I contacted him, he gave me the coordinates of his friend and I called her“, says Isaline Amalric-Choury.
During their exchange, the pieces of the puzzle come together. In August 1943, Marcelle Bastien was deported to the Ravensbrück camp. Christiane, she is entrusted to the Red Cross before being welcomed by her paternal grandparents in Côte d’Or. Two years later, Marcelle Bastien is released and finds her daughter who does not recognize her. “I told him : ‘Go away, you’re not my mom.’ It couldn’t have been easy for her. Recently, I even discovered that on her return she had to go to the town hall to recognize me even though we had a birth certificate in which I was born under her name.“, book Christiane Lauthelier.
–
A heavy legacy
At their own level, each on their own, the two descendants worked for the memory and transmission of the history of their parents. In addition to the lectures given in middle and high schools, Isaline Amalric-Choury created a website dedicated to the Resistance and Christiane Lauthelier wrote a book published in 2008. “There are always many truths and many interpretations of the truth, commente Isaline Amalric-Choury. But there are facts which are indisputable. So from the archival pieces I am transmitting the memory now so that the stone memory of History is not distorted. We have to end with voluntary or unintentional distortions, that’s kind of the meaning of my life. It is even more important now all the more with Corsican youth. We sometimes see drifts, that’s why I go to work in high schools. Transmission and memory are fundamental things for me.“
I have always had a feeling of guilt that I was not up to the level of these heroes. It’s very difficult because you feel guilty all the time.
But for the two bearers of memory, facing their story has not always been easy. Niece of Danielle Casanova and daughter of Resident Maurice Choury, Isaline, who spent part of her career at the Elysee Palace under François Mitterrand, in particular in the press relations department, has continuously sought her legitimacy. “I have always had a feeling of guilt that I was not up to the level of these heroes. It’s very difficult because you feel guilty all the time. Danielle Casanova, just before leaving for Auschwitz, wrote in particular: ‘Never get a heavy heart when thinking of me. I am happy with the joy that the high conscience gives to never having failed. Our beautiful France will be free, our ideal will triumph.‘Who can say such a sentence? It haunted my youth. Like my aunt, have I never failed … I don’t know“, she wonders.
In Dijon, Christiane, now retired after a career as a teacher, has rejected her story for part of her life. Everything had been kept a secret from him. And when the tongues started to loosen, she wasn’t holding anything back or avoiding the subject. At the end of the 1970s, she went to the Ravensbrück camp with her mother and some of her fellow inmates. “I was very embarrassed, I couldn’t ask questions. I was uncomfortable with my own story because it hadn’t been really explained to me. When I was a child it was like a forbidden subject. But later, when we went on a trip for example, they would talk about it willingly“, she confides. However, the release comes at the time of writing her book.”It was as if everything had instantly snap back into place in my head.“
–
In the Pantheon, “it has its place”
At the Fort de Romainville, associations are fighting to ensure that the memory of all those who have been imprisoned there is respected. “It should not become buildings or businesses. Hope we do something right“, explains Christiane.
In Piana, Isaline, she found a new fight: to bring Danielle Casanova to the Pantheon. “It has its place there. I think I’ll start a petition.“
The two women are expected to meet soon. The meeting place is already fixed, in Piana, land of the one they describe as the very definition of courage.
–
