The municipality of Villejuif, in partnership with associations of veterans and the LDH (League of Human Rights) is preparing to pay homage to them by inscribing them on the war memorial of the city. A ceremony in their memory is being held on March 8 on the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day.
These three auxiliary nurses in what was then called the Villejuif asylum (now Paul Guiraud hospital), were awarded bronze medals by decree of the Ministry of the Interior dated June 10, 1919. honor of epidemics. But when the Villejuif war memorial, located on the Place de l’Hotel de Ville, was erected in 1922, they did not appear on the list of the dead.
For several years, the local section of the LDH has therefore tried to repair this oversight. With the help of the municipality and veterans associations, ULAC and UNC, the names of the three nurses will finally be set in stone.
“This tribute paid to the women who provided care and care should not make us forget that more than a hundred years later, they still do not have the equal pay that they demanded at the time. Commemorations are also made for this. It is a work of memory which is essential in view of the crisis we are experiencing today, which puts the nursing staff, who constantly demand the recognition and the means necessary for their missions, to the test ”, underlines Pierre Garzon, mayor of Villejuif.
The names were engraved on Tuesday on the monument to the dead as evidenced by the photograph of one posted by the Val de Bièvre section of the LDH, which, moreover, in its monthly sheet gives some elements of the life of these three nurses.
Marie Fernande Brunet is from Orne where she was born October 13, 1889 in Ginai and married July 24, 1909 in Exmes with Albert Marie Taupin. They come to live in Villejuif. Her husband died at the front in 1915 and Marie Fernande died in her home in Villejuif (54 avenue de la République) on October 25, 1918.
Berthe Stephan is from Côtes-d’Armor, born April 16, 1897 in Pommeret. Single, she died in her home in Villejuif (54 avenue de la République) on October 28, 1918.
Marie Alphonsine Iehly was born on April 21, 1894 in Saint-Dié in the Vosges. She married on October 3, 1916 in Villejuif with Georges Ulysse Voiturier. A time resident, like her colleagues, at 54 avenue de la République in Villejuif, she moved to 5 rue Moutier where she died on November 13, 1918, two days after the armistice.
Their graves together are, today in a state of neglect, in the 2nd division of the municipal cemetery of Villejuif
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