Madeleine Riffaud’s Defiant Resistance

Helena Bonham Carter (0:00)

The 23rd of July, 1944 A sunny Sunday afternoon in occupied Paris.

Madeleine Riffaud was riding a bicycle.

Rick Stroud (0:11)

She was very small. Her hair was braided in a great ponytail down her back.

She trundled through the streets of Paris, past people just having a nice Sunday afternoon, trying to forget the war.

Helena Bonham Carter (0:24)

The Allies had recently invaded northern France on D-Day, but Paris was still under Nazi occupation. It had been harsh and horrific. Tens of thousands of French prisoners had been rounded up and deported to concentration camps, tortured or, in some cases, shot. Seventy-eight thousand Jews were sent to death camps. The Resistance was brutally repressed.

But now the Germans were on the back foot. Food was rationed. The mood was bleak.

Riffaud felt the weight of the satchel on her shoulders as she bounced over the cobbles towards the Sulferino Bridge.

Rick Stroud (1:03)

The sun was glinting on the river. She saw a German sergeant standing on the bridge, and this guy was on his own. He was looking at the water. We don't know what he was thinking about, but Madeleine thought, this is my lucky day.

Helena Bonham Carter (1:16)

Anger and fear pulsed through Riffaud as she pedaled faster and faster.

Rick Stroud (1:21)

Clank, clank along the pavement. She pulled the brakes, stopped the bike, put her feet down to balance herself, swivelled the bag round.

Helena Bonham Carter (1:27)

Riffaud pulled out an automatic revolver. She pointed it at the soldier and paused.

She didn't want to shoot him in the back. She wanted him to look her in the eyes.

Rick Stroud (1:40)

She waited for a second. The soldier turned round and looked at her and saw what seemed to be a pretty young girl enjoying the sunny Sunday afternoon in Paris by the River Seine. She pulled the trigger of the gun and shot him twice in the temple.

Helena Bonham Carter (1:54)

He didn't have time to scream.

Rick Stroud (1:56)

He dropped like a sack. She'd done it.

Helena Bonham Carter (2:01)

I'm Helena Bonham Carter and for BBC Radio 4, this is History's Secret Heroes. Two stories of deception, acts of resistance and courage from World War II.

Madeleine Riffaud's defiant resistance.

Anne Sebba (2:35)

Decades later, in 2016, I walked up five floors to her small flat in central Paris. And what strikes you first of all is the exotic songbirds, because she had various birds in cages.

Helena Bonham Carter (2:54)

Historian Anne Sebba worked for years to persuade Madeleine Riffaud to give her an interview.

Anne Sebba (3:01)

I wrote to her and I phoned her, and she kept saying, no, she didn't want to be interviewed about her work during the French Resistance.

Helena Bonham Carter (3:11)

Finally, Sebba wrote a book on women in wartime Paris. Then at last, he full invited her to her apartment.

Anne Sebba (3:20)

Here's a woman not interested in fame or vanity at all. She smoked, she liked to drink gin, who can blame her. She was fairly hunched. She was wearing an old jumper.

But I was very aware of seeing a woman whose body bore the scars of war.

Helena Bonham Carter (3:42)

Riffaud was then 92 years old. Her long black plait was now grey.

Anne Sebba (3:49)

Everything about her life was simplistic. The only exotic element of her life were the exotic birds.

Helena Bonham Carter (3:59)

Against a soundtrack of the birds' chirps and whistles, Anne asked Riffaud about her time in the Resistance, and the stories poured out. On the morning of the day when she shot a Nazi soldier, 19-year-old Madeleine Riffaud read the underground newspaper Lettre Française.

Rick Stroud (4:19)

She had marvellous piercing, they looked black, deep brown eyes.

Helena Bonham Carter (4:25)

Those eyes widened in horror as she read that a Nazi tank division had stormed into the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Aquitaine. They summoned all the villagers to the town square, even the elderly and sick.

They were accused, wrongly, of helping the resistance. The men of the village were shot with machine guns. The women and children were locked in a church.

Rick Stroud (4:51)

They proceeded to burn it to the ground, and the whole village was wiped out.

Helena Bonham Carter (4:55)

History's Secret Heroes Series 4, History's Secret Heroes Series 4 Historian Rick Stroud is writing a biography of Madeleine Riffaud. The massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane revealed the horrors the Nazis were prepared to inflict on civilians. Six hundred and forty-two villagers were murdered.

Only seven survived. Riffaud grew up surrounded by the dangers of another war. The sites of some First World War battles were known as the Red Zone.