2023-08-17 22:23:39
At the age of 11, Annette Lajon hid false identity cards under her dolls in the family home during searches by the German army in Normandy. The one who was one of his youngest resistance fighters during the Second World War died on Wednesday at the age of 91.
Born in December 1931, Annette Lajon, an only daughter, had decided to join the Norman resistance very early in 1942 alongside her parents who had refused the 1940 armistice. said to his parents: “I know that you are resisting, I want to fight with you! “.
A “work of memory”
Since the announcement of his death, tributes have followed one another. “The fight for the values of France has no age: in 1942, Annette Lajon was eleven years old when she decided to resist against the Nazis in Normandy. His death commits us to take up his torch of transmission, ”posted Thursday on X (ex-Twitter) President Emmanuel Macron.
The fight for the values of France has no age: in 1942, Annette Lajon was eleven years old when she decided to resist against the Nazis in Normandy. His death urges us to take up his torch of transmission.
Thoughts to all his loved ones. pic.twitter.com/o7wPm8epP0
—Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) August 17, 2023
“Entrant in resistance from the age of 11, hiding her equipment behind her dolls, Annette Lajon had become a tireless witness of the Norman Resistance. She passed away at 91. His legacy will live. We will continue to carry his work of memory, ”posted for his part the Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu.
Joining the resistance at the age of 11, hiding her equipment behind her dolls, Annette Lajon had become a tireless witness of the Norman Resistance. She passed away at 91.
His legacy will live. We will continue to carry his work of memory.
— Sebastien Lecornu (@SebLecornu) August 17, 2023
Sébastien Jallet, prefect of Orne, salutes an “ardent defender of peace, a tireless transmitter of memory who has never ceased throughout her life to meet the younger generations to share her exceptional experience and her heroic story.
Throughout her life, Annette Lajon has remained very committed to transmitting the duty of remembrance to young people in schools. At 91, she was still very active and still lived in her parents’ house which has belonged to her family for more than 200 years, reports theorne fighter.
Resistance family
“Despite my young age, I was well aware that an unfortunate word could cost the life of others and myself. We had to keep absolute secrecy, ”she confided to journalists a few years ago. Her parents made, among other things, fake identity cards and hid stamps, weapons, plastic loaves and equipment parachuted by the English, such as the tire blasters that the young girl was going to place on the roads one night. on two with his mother in order to block the German convoys.
She had recounted the visit of the head of the Gestapo Richard Reinhardt in Orne in February 1944, for a search in order. “We have been very lucky on several occasions, like the day of this search. At the entrance to the room, there were my toys and dolls on the floor. Seeing this, Reinhardt signaled to his men not to search there, and yet, it was in this room above the ceiling, that the material for false identity cards was… At my age, I I was above all a liaison officer. The Germans had no idea that such a young girl could resist,” she explained with a smile on her face.
In June 1944, the family home was requisitioned by the Germans who settled there. Among them, soldiers of the Wermacht and the SS of the first Panzer division, responsible for the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane, relates the Orne Combattante. Annette Lajon, who was the last resistance alive in Orne, willingly told this kind of anecdotes and confided that luck had allowed her to pass between denunciations and raids. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here telling you about this today.”
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