Resident Anise Postel-Vinay dies at 97

These resistant women have had extremely rich lives, their fight did not stop in 1945 and our role is to continue itsaid Geneviève Zamansky-Bonnin, secretary general of the Association Germaine Tillion and close to Anise Postel-Vinay, who died at the age of 97 this Sunday May 24, 2020 in Paris.

Born Anise Girard on June 12, 1922 in Paris, she joined the Resistance as a teenager, encouraged by her mother, and provided military information within the Gloria SMH (His Majesty Service) network, according to the Musée de la Résistance et de la Deportation of Besançon.

In August 1942, she was arrested by the Gestapo for acts of resistance, when she was only 19 years old.

First incarcerated in the prison of Health then in Fresnes, she is then deported by train in October 1943 to the concentration camp of Ravensbrück, in Germany, alongside the resistant Germaine Tillion and Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz, niece of the General.

I was very depressed because I did not have the courage to escape. On the passenger train where we were seated, Germaine made me speak and allowed me to forget my feeling of cowardice, she confided in 2015 to the magazine Le Pèlerin.

“She pulled me out of the distress that threatened me”

I was 20 years old, Germaine 35 years old, she got me out of the distress that threatened meshe also told AFP in 2014 during a presidential tribute to the Resistance.

We lived in terror, distress, in this place of death, she will say in particular about the deportation.

She was released on April 23, 1945 by the Swedish Red Cross.

At the Liberation, she engaged with Germaine Tillion in writing the history of the deportation.

On June 6, 1946, she married the resistant André Postel-Vinay, a senior civil servant with whom she would have four children.

Anise Postel-Vinay, whose family was originally from Doubs, worked hard to donate the archives of Germaine Tillion to the Museum of Resistance and Deportation in Besançon, where she will stay one of our most faithful witnesses, according to management.

In 2009, she came to deposit the operetta manuscript clandestinely written in Ravensbrück by Germaine Tillion in October 1944 “The Verfügbar in Hell”, one of the masterpieces of our collection, underlined the direction of the museum.

La Résistant published in 2015 with Laure Adler ” Live “ , an account of his daily deportation.

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