2023-05-27 17:14:54
She was the last survivor of the Choisel camp. The communist resistant, Odette Nilès, died in the night from Friday to Saturday at 100 years old. “Odette Nilès represented a century of commitment and freedom”, paid tribute to her Emmanuel Macronon this Saturday anniversary day of the creation of the National Council of Resistance.
For a long time, she was discreet about this budding romance with the young hero of the Second World War Guy Moquet. Two teenagers aged 17 and 18 for a love affair separated by barbed wire, as ephemeral as it is eternal. Even his son, born just after the war and named Claude-Guy, only learns late that his marital status refers to this symbol of Résistance to the German occupier.
Guy Môquet, his childhood sweetheart
And then when Nicolas Sarkozy announces in 2008 that Môquet’s last letter will be read in high schools, the microphones reach out to his former lover, who is then 84 years old. So she tells, in the media then in a book Guy Môquet, my love of youth, this meeting at the Choisel internment camp, in Châteaubriant (Loire-Atlantique). She was transferred there in September 1941, a month after her arrest in Paris.
They get to know each other “at the barrier”, the boundary between the men’s camp and the women’s camp. And exchange on both sides of the strip of land that separates the fences. He plays the harmonica, writes poems and quickly develops a crush on Odette. He asks her one day if she would like to give him “a skate” (a kiss in slang). “I didn’t know what it was but I said okay,” she recalls. He offers her a ring made from a coin. And gave him a sweet farewell note before leaving for the platoon with 47 comrades, on October 22, 1941: “I am going to die (…) Without having had what you promised me”.
Almost three years interned in several camps
Daughter of workers, Odette – Lecland by her maiden name – was born on December 27, 1922 in Paris. She moved to three years with her family in the suburbs, in Drancy, in the heart of the future red belt. His father joined the PCF at the Congress of Tours. She was part of the Secours rouge and then of the Jeunes filles de France. His heroines are Rosa Luxemburg and Dolores Ibarruri, la Pasionaria espagnole.
From the start of the war, the high school student distributed leaflets and participated in demonstrations on the Grands Boulevards in Paris. She was arrested by the French police on August 13, 1941 at the Richelieu-Drouot metro station on her way to one of them. Along with 16 boys. For nearly three years, Odette was interned in several camps. Until that of Mérignac, from where she escaped in 1944 and joined the resistance in Bordeaux. It was there that she met a certain Maurice Nilès, a young FFI (French Interior Forces) commander. Her future husband.
feminist activists
After the war, he became deputy (1958-1985) and PCF mayor (1959-1997) of Drancy. She also remained faithful to her communist ideal all her life and campaigned for women’s rights. Director of the secular patronage of the city of Aubervilliers, she meets Yuri Gagarin and dines with Fidel Castro.
For decades, she testified in schools, tirelessly, to bring to life the memory of her comrades who were shot. The last survivor of the Choisel camp had peacefully passed the 100-year mark at the end of December in her retirement home in Drancy. But remained haunted by this Marseillaise sung loudly with the others to accompany their brothers in the peloton, this October 22, 1941.
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