Danielle Casanova

Danielle Casanova (born as Vincentella Périni, 9 January 1909 – 9 May 1943) was a Corsica born French communist, member of the French Resistance during World War II. She was responsible for the Communist Youth and founded in 1936 the women's organization Union des Jeunes Filles de France (UJFF- Union of Young French Women). She was arrested and deported to Auschwitz where she was tortured and died.

Danielle Casanova
Born9 January 1909
Ajaccio, Corsica
Died9 May 1943(1943-05-09) (aged 34)
Auschwitz, German-occupied Poland
NationalityFrench
OccupationPolitician, Journalist, Dental surgeon
Known forFrench Resistant
AwardsLégion d'honneur

Biography

Vincentella Périni was born on 9 January 1909 in Ajaccio, Corsica, her parents Olivier and Marie Hyacinthe (born Versini) were school teachers, as a child her nickname was Lella, she had three sisters and one brother André. After finishing secondary school she moved to Paris in November 1927 to study dentistry.[1]

In Paris, she became interested in politics and joined the Union Fédérale des Étudiants (Federal Union of Students) where she met her future husband Laurent Casanova, another Corsican. In 1928 she joined the Young Communist League of France.[2] She began to call herself "Danielle" and quickly became Group Secretary to the Faculty of Medicine. Still studying, she joined the Central Committee of the movement at the Seventh Congress of June 1932, and took up its direction in February 1934 where she was the only woman. Faced with the rapid expansion of the Communist Youth, the Eighth Congress in Marseilles of 1936 charged her with creating the UJFF. This organisation, though still close to the Communist Youth, was aimed at creating a pacifist, anti-fascist movement. She was elected Secretary-General of the UJFF. At its First Congress in December 1936, she organised a collection of milk for malnourished Spanish children victims of the Civil War and help collect and ship relief supplies to Spanish republican forces.[3]

In October 1938 Danielle served as leader of the French delegation to the United States at the World Congress of Youth for Peace, held at Vassar College. After the French Communist Youth was banned in September 1939, Danielle Casanova went into hiding. She founded the newspaper Trait d'union (Hyphen).[4] From October 1940, after the fall of France, she helped set up women's committees in the Paris region, while still writing for the underground press, especially Pensée Libre (Free Thought). She also founded Voix des Femmes (Women's Voice). She organised demonstrations against the occupying forces, including the events of 8 November and 11 November 1940[5] caused by Professor Paul Langevin's arrest, and also the demonstration of 14 July 1941 that she organised.[3] On 2 August 1941 Casanova met Albert Ouzoulias in Montparnasse and placed him in charge of the Bataillons de la Jeunesse (Youth Battalions), fighting groups that were being created by the Jeunesses Communistes (Communist Youth).[6]

On 11 February 1942 she is arrested by French Police while entering the hiding place of a Jewish couple, Georges Politzer and his wife Maï, at 170 bis, rue de Grenelle in the seventh arrondissement. French Police of the Special Anticommunist Brigade (BS) had been following Danielle Casanova since 23 January after spotting her carrying a big suitcase to that same building (it contained coal for the Politzer).[7] They were all taken to the Special Brigade headquater where they were interrogated until 23 March. Danielle managed to get a letter out to her mother.[7]

At the end of March, she was moved to the German section of la Sante jail. On 24 August 1942 she was moved to the transit camp Fort de Romainville and transferred to the German authorities.[3]

Transported to Auschwitz on 24 January 1943, inside the cattle cars of a train, she arrived three days later on 27 January. She was assigned to the camp infirmary Revier to work as a dentist on the Kapos.[8] She helped other women from the Convoi des 31000 that brought them to Auschwitz,[lower-alpha 1] passing Maïe Politzer as a doctor and other women, including Madeleine Passot, as nurses. Even in jail and in concentration camp, Casanova did not stop campaigning, organizing clandestine publications and events. She died of typhus on 9 May 1943.[10]

Je suis morte pour la France (I am dead for France)

— Danielle Casanova's last words, [8]

Legacy

According to the biography that Simone Tery wrote about her in 1949 (Du Soleil Plein le Coeur), when news of her death reached her home in Corsica, “the church bells rang out in every village".[11] Her ashes were later placed in the family grave in Vistale, a hamlet near Piana where there is a memorial to her.[12] A heroine of French Resistance, she has lent her name to streets, schools, and colleges throughout France. A large SCNM ferry between Marseilles and Corsica is called MS Danielle Casanova. She has been featured on a commemorative French postage stamp in 1983.[12]

See also

Notes
  1. Known as “Le Convoi des 31000” (named for the numbers tattooed on their arms by the Nazis which represented the transport they arrived on), 230 women ranging in age from 17 to 67 were taken to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp on 24 January 1943. They were the only group of non-Jewish women sent to death camps during the Nazi occupation, women from the French Resistance who clandestinely fought Nazis and the Vichy regime.[9]

References
  1. Gasper, p. 74.
  2. Gasper, p. 75.
  3. Thiébaut 2012, p. 68.
  4. Durand 1990, p. 91.
  5. Article du 10 novembre 1980 du journal l'Humanité
  6. Johnson, Douglas (6 December 1995). "Obituary: Albert Ouzoulias". The Independent (UK). Retrieved 21 May 2015.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  7. "Mémoire Vive – Marie, Mathilde, dite Maï, POLITZER, née Larcade – 31680". Mémoire Vive (in French). 6 December 2012.
  8. Lefebvre-Filleau & de Vasselot 2020, p. 250.
  9. Moorehead, C. (2011). A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship and Survival in World War Two. Random House of Canada. ISBN 978-0-307-36667-2.
  10. Jégouzo, Yves (14 June 2014). "Madeleine, dite »Betty » JÉGOUZO, née Passot, alias Lucienne Langlois – 31668". Retrieved 15 August 2015.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  11. Nord, P. (2020). After the Deportation: Memory Battles in Postwar France. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-47890-8.
  12. Gasper, p. 76.

Sources
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