THE GIRL WHO SAVED PARIS
Madeleine was born in Arvillers in the Somme region of France. Her parents were Jean-Emile Riffaud and Armande (Gabrielle) Boisson. They were both primary school teachers from Limousin, who moved to Picardy for work.
Her father had been wounded in the First World War and had become a pacifist.
She grew up in an area still devastated from the carnage caused by the First World War.
Madeleine was educated at a school in Paris where she developed a love of literature, and in particular, poetry.
She was at home when the Nazis invaded France. The family were part of ‘L’exode’, the mass column of refugees that left Picardy to head south, hoping to escape from the invaders.
On their journey, the column was strafed by Stukas from the Luftwaffe. Madeleine decided to return to the family home with her sick and infirm grandfather.
Upon arriving in Amiens, Madeleine went to the Red Cross headquarters to get her grandfather a stretcher. Crossing a square, she was molested by a group of German soldiers. Seeing what was happening, their commanding officer intervened.
To her shock, the officer turned round and kicked her in the backside, sending Madeleine flying face down into the gutter. Humiliated by the laughter of the Germans, it was at this moment that she decided to join the French Resistance.
“I remember saying to myself ‘I don’t know who they are or where they are, but I’ll find the people who are fighting this, and I’ll join them.”
She reflected later, “That moment decided my whole life.”
Madeleine always claimed that activism ran in her blood. Her great, great grandfather had taken part in the popular uprising of 1851, protesting at the coup d’état of Louis Napoleon. For this, he had been sentenced to hard labour in Algeria.
Before Madeleine could take any action herself, she contracted tuberculosis. She was sent to a sanitorium for young students, just outside Grenoble. She had not realised it was a hub for the French Resistance. She was approached by Marcel Gagliordi – but it took very little persuasion to get her to join them.
Madeleine took the nom de guerre ‘Rainer’, after her favourite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke.
Returning to Paris, Madeleine became extremely active in the Maquis (resistance). She was told that anyone fighting the Nazis in the city, had a life expectancy of just five months. She remembered the organization being a “sacred, patriotic union.”
Madeleine quickly built up a reputation for volunteering for the most dangerous missions. She was the expert at stealing guns from policemen and Nazi soldiers.
“Hundreds of young women like me were involved. We were the messengers, the intelligence gatherers, the repairers of the web. When the men fell or were captured, we got the news through, pulled the nets tight again. We carried documents, leaflets, sometimes arms. We walked miles; bikes were too precious, and the Metro was too dangerous.”
Meanwhile, she worked in a local hospital, training to be a midwife.
In 1944, the Nazis committed the appalling massacre at Oradour-Sur Glane, where 643 civilians were murdered. France was outraged.
At the same time, she saw an incident in Paris that horrified her. A fellow Resistance member stole a gun from a German soldier. Thinking he was about to be shot, the German fell to his knees, crying and begging for his life. The Resistance fighter let him go.
One week later, the same German soldier saw the Resistance member in the street. He walked right up to him – and shot him dead.
Madeleine was so enraged, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She saw a Nazi officer standing on the Pont de Solferino in Paris, gazing into the river. There was a small boy loitering nearby, so she ushered the child away.
Then, she went up to the German officer and tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned around, Madeleine shot him twice in the head, killing him outright. She said it would have been cowardly to shoot him in the back – she had to do it face-to-face. “I had a job – and I was going to do it.”
Madeleine nearly managed to escape on her bicycle, but a passing collaborator drove his car at the bike, knocking her to the ground. She was handcuffed and delivered to the Gestapo.
In later years, Madeleine was asked if she had any remorse about the murder. She said not. “It was right. I felt very calm, very pure.”
She added, “He dropped like a stone. He didn’t suffer. It wasn’t done with hate – if anything, I was pained about having to do it.”
Madeleine was initially lucky. As it was Sunday, all the Gestapo torturers were on weekend leave. Instead, she was beaten up by a couple of local policemen and then driven to prison.
Whilst in there, she helped deliver a baby to a Jewish woman. The prison guard was so infuriated that he punched Madeleine. She was immediately driven back to Gestapo headquarters on the Rue des Saussaies.
The Gestapo repeatedly tortured Madeleine but could not break her silence. She had her jaw and nose broken, was waterboarded, and was subject to repeated electric shocks (because they left no marks).
They also broke the arms and legs of a fourteen-year-old accomplice, right in front of her, telling Madeleine only she could stop his suffering. Finally, the Gestapo executed another man standing next to her.
Throughout all of this, she refused to give them any information about the resistance network.
During her ordeal, Madeleine told herself, “I am not a victim. I am a resistante.”
Her captors also realised that Madeleine had shot the German officer with one of their own guns. Eventually, after a month of interrogation, they told her that she would be executed.
She was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp by train but managed to escape. However, Madeleine was quickly recaptured.
Madeleine was then transferred to Fresnes Prison. At this point, another female captive gave her a picture of St Therese of Lisieux. She kept it close to her.
Although not religious, Madeleine later wondered whether the saint had protected her.
Madeleine also began to write her own poems.
On the day of her execution, Madeleine was taken outside with other prisoners. They were all killed but she was not. She was taken back to her cell.
Then, she was unexpectedly released. Madeleine didn’t realise the Red Cross had been working to save her life. A prisoner exchange had been negotiated by Swedish consul, Raoul Nordling – and she was set free.
Upon her release, she learned the Gestapo had just executed 23 members of a Resistance group nicknamed the Manouchians. Every one of them was her friend. Her anger was fuelled.
Madeleine immediately returned to action.
Shortly afterwards, she was involved in the capture of eighty German soldiers on a supply train in the Belville Tunnel.
Madeleine worked with just three fellow resistance fighters, under her command. They stopped the train by letting off fireworks, making the Germans think they were under attack from a bigger force. They needed to uncouple the train from the engine, but unfortunately didn’t have the knowhow.
Before the attack, Madeleine heard that a retired railway man lived nearby. She visited him to ask for his help. He was washing the dishes with his wife.
Madeleine explained to him that uncoupling the train was very dangerous and he was putting his life at risk.
When the train stopped, the elderly gentleman crawled up the track, uncoupled the carriages – and then just walked off home.
After capturing the prisoners, Madeleine realised it was her twentieth birthday. With her men, they celebrated by eating ham, jam and German sausage ‘liberated’ from the train.
The bravery of her actions earned Madeleine promotion to the rank of Lieutenant in the French Forces of the Interior – the youngest person to achieve this rank during the war.
During the Liberation of Paris, Madeleine fought the enemy in the Place de la Republique. She was part of a group attacking an SS barracks based there.
An American soldier took a photo of her sitting on a tank as it drove through the streets nearby, with her black hair flowing behind her. It was published in the American papers with the title ‘The Girl Who Saved Paris’. Consequently, Madeleine was seen as a symbol of French heroism. (It was an image shown again in a documentary about the liberation of the city, directed by Pierre Hurel).
Madeleine remembered the city’s liberation fondly. She said everyone got involved, whether they were children or the elderly. “You can’t know how wonderful it was to finally battle in the daylight.” However, 1500 Parisians died in the attempt to free their city.
Madeleine continued fighting until the Nazis had been forced out of France. She wanted to fight on until Berlin but was unable to do so. France was still a very patriarchal society (women still did not have the vote). To fight abroad, she had to get her father’s permission – and he refused. “I did not have permission to do that, I was told. That was a shock.”
“I was a minor. I didn’t have my parents’ consent. I was a girl!”
Her father’s reaction was understandable. Her parents had listened to BBC radio broadcasts throughout the war and on one occasion had heard the wireless announce that Madeleine had been killed.
They were stunned and delighted to get her back – they were not going to run the risk of losing her again.
At the same time, her tuberculosis recurred. The Maquis told Madeleine they could no longer have her in their ranks for fear of spreading the disease.
Her father made Madeleine put her gun in a drawer and ordered her never to touch it again.
After the war, Madeleine suffered from depression for a while. She tried to join the French Army but was told she was too young, still being under twenty-one.
She tried to kill herself by taking an overdose, but when this did not work, she vowed never to speak about her wartime experiences. “I was alive but destroyed. I wanted to die. If anyone even touched me, I couldn’t bear it.”
Nevertheless, she was awarded the Croix de Guerre, presented by President De Gaulle.
Madeleine was subsequently befriended by surrealist poet Paul Eluard, who introduced her to a group of artists based in Paris that included Louis Aragon and Pablo Picasso.
Madeleine later said that she felt Eluard, “Had saved my life.”
“They stopped me from doing myself in, because a lot of Resistance fighters killed themselves after the war.”
Madeleine was persuaded to publish her first poetry collection entitled, ‘Le Poing Ferme’ (The Closed Fist). Picasso drew the front cover for the collection. She always believed he was a little bit in love with her.
Picasso painted Madeleine. Years later, an art critic analysed the portrait. “He saw a woman who was still a girl and yet who did not laugh or sparkle like a girl, for she was living with the shadow of what she had so recently experienced in the cells of the Gestapo. Picasso drew the heavy eyelids of a woman who couldn’t forget.”
She also started working as a journalist for the newspaper ‘Ce Soir’, run by Aragon.
At this time, Madeleine married Pierre Daix, a young communist who had been imprisoned in Mauthausen concentration camp during the war.
The marriage did not last long. “We were both broken.” However, they did have a daughter named Fabienne. Her baby was taken away from her after just twelve days, for fear of it getting TB.
However, Fabienne contracted Madeleine’s tuberculosis and died whilst still very young.
In Paris, Madeleine met Ho Chi Minh, president of the Provisional Government of Vietnam. She was absolutely inspired by him.
In 1951, Madeleine met Vietnamese poet Nguyen Dinh Thi at an international youth conference for peace held in Berlin. They fell in love – but he was married with two children.
Soon afterwards, his wife died, so Madeleine moved to Vietnam to live with him. They were married.
Vietnam was just tumbling into civil war (often called the War of Independence).
By now, Madeleine was working for the communist newspaper ‘L’Humanite’ – despite claiming to have never read either Marx or Engels. She became their war correspondent.
Madeleine managed to link up with the Viet Minh, who were the country’s independence fighters. She produced a documentary film entitled ‘Dans le Maquis du Sud-Vietnam.’ She said, “A people who oppress another can never be a free people.”
After four years, Ho Chi Minh, passed a law which banned mixed marriages. Madeliene was thrown out of Vietnam and returned to France, although she maintained a long-distance relationship with Nguyen Dinh Thi for over fifty years. Years later, she wrote a poem about him. ‘I hold your shadow in my arms.’
When the Algerian War broke out, Madeleine was sent to cover the conflict by her newspaper.
She was appalled at witnessing French paratroopers treating Algerian civilians with immense cruelty. Even worse, she learned captured fighters were being taken to Paris, where they were being tortured in the very same rooms that she had suffered so much at the hands of the Gestapo. She stated how could this be being done in the name of the country she had fought for and loved so much?
Whilst in Algeria, the car in which Madeleine was travelling, was ambushed when a truck was driven into it. She instinctively put up her right arm to save herself.
Madeleine received serious injuries. Her hands were badly damaged, and she lost a finger. She had a head injury and lost the sight in one eye – and the vision in the other was seriously impaired.
She had one last major newspaper assignment. Madeleine returned to Vietnam to follow the war with the Americans. She joined up with the Viet Cong and reported from the frontline – giving her newspaper an unusual perspective on the conflict.
It was reported at the time that the Americans were bombing hospitals and schools. The US Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, denied this. Madeleine took hundreds of photographs, providing evidence that proved this destruction was happening.
She wrote that the French in Algeria, and the Americans in Vietnam, were behaving in the same way that the Germans had done in France.
However, Madeleine’s health was restricting her capabilities.
She returned to Paris and gave up journalism, becoming a nursing assistant in a hospital.
Madeleine took up writing again, producing a bestseller, ‘Les Linges de la Nuit’, and another collection of poetry, ‘Cheval Rouge’.
She became an active campaigner for improving the pay and working conditions of carers in the city of Paris.
In 1994, a museum curator found the poems Madeleine had written whilst in prison. He persuaded her to write a memoir so that the poetry could be put into context. This meant breaking her silence of fifty years. The book was called ‘On l’appelait Rainer’.
The Vietnamese Government awarded Madeleine the ‘Viet Order of Resistance’. This was followed by her being made Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur in 2001 (this was upgraded further in 2013, when she received the ‘Ordre National du Marite’).
Nguyen Dinh Thi died in 2003.
Madeleine lived alone in her central Paris flat, where she gradually lost her eyesight. It was a fifth-floor apartment with no lift, so she was unable to go outside. She kept exotic birds because she loved to hear them sing.
She was a chain smoker who loved an occasional gin.
Madeleine admitted she had not a very happy later life – full of agony and suffering. A friend had said of her, “Madeleine wants to take on the suffering of all the crises of the world.”
In one of her final interviews, Madeleine was once again asked about the assassination. “Killing someone is a terrible thing to do. It is never good to kill anyone, even an enemy. You should know that.”
She also said, “There is a spirit of resistance. You have it or you don’t. I had it throughout my life.”
On her one hundredth birthday in August 2024, Madeleine was visited by the Vietnamese Ambassador to France.
Madeleine died in her flat, three months later.
RIP – Resistance In Paris
