[Un article de The Conversation écrit par Pierre-Emmanuel Dufayel – Doctorant en histoire, Université de Caen Normandie ]
Out of the hundreds of thousands of individuals repatriated then, deported women are therefore a tiny minority, representing much less than 1 % of people repatriated.
The return of deportation of these resistance fighters drowned in a flood of men, finding a country that tries to restore its place to each of the sexes, is an event that cracks the representations of the feminine and the masculine.
How are they welcomed, and that represents for this liberated France the women whose torture then symbolizes France which has stood against the occupier?
Return to a “virile France”
The famous posters of the Frenay Ministry (Ministry of Prisoners, deportees and refugees from the Provisional Government of the French Republic) who show three solidarity men walking towards their future speak for themselves. The preparations and official speeches mainly anticipate the return of the absent, to the masculine: prisoners of war, workers of the STO, and, according to the terminology used then, the political deportees.
If women are not forgotten in the propaganda of the Frenay Ministry, they appear only through the figure of women of prisoners of war, and as those who must prepare for the return of men, as illustrated by this extract of a brochure project for the woman of the absent: “If he talks to you a lot about her comrades of captivity, do not be jealous. Let him do it. Do not “get out” it, despite your pride in having found it. […] Watch your children. That they recognize his paternal authority and do not call him “sir”. You need to give your husband for his place as head of the family. Do not rush anything, but always go in the same direction. It is the man who must drive the boat. »»
Thus, in fact, nothing is really done to prepare women to return to their home, while nothing is set up either to prepare men on the return of women.
However, the question of their return was asked long before the first deportees returned to France. Under the impetus in particular of Adrienne Weil, a sub-committee responsible for “the return of young women currently in Germany” is set up within the Frenay Ministry at the end of September 1944, following the steps to an existing working group since the summer within the UNRRA (United Nations Administration for Rescue and Reconstruction), and thinking of the question on a European scale.
The discussions which follow one another on the preparation of repatriation within this group of experts and experts are above all an opportunity to emphasize the fundamental differences between the two main categories of displaced women: civil and the deportees, then qualified as “policies”. But if many take particular care not to confuse the two groups, the work is concentrated almost exclusively on the question of prostitution and on the “recovery” of these absent, imagining that most of the workers have been obliged to prostitute themselves to survive.
Thus, although certain conclusions of the subcommittee alert that “very few women will find a welcoming home corresponding to that which they have left, and that they have fantasized”, the real consequences of its discussions will therefore be essentially medical. Most directives emphasize the compulsory nature of screening for venereal diseases. Thus in March 45, while the first women returned from deportation, the chief doctor concluded that the gynecological examination must be “made compulsory”. It is the only assessment ultimately of this reflection on a specific return of women, even brought before their return the stigma of a distorted representation of deported women.
Many elements, however, reveal a desire to restore everyone's role, as in the example of the preparation of women who are absent. The moment of liberation and return to France is not only for these resistance fighters when they find a name and a first name, it is also, the time of the reconstruction of female identity after dehumanization.
This reconstruction of gender identity quickly imposed itself on them, as during the passage in Switzerland of the first repatriated where, in the packages that we prepared for them, the old comrades wanted to put makeup and beauty products.
In the great titles of the Liberation which quite largely cover the return of the first survivors in mid-April 1945, the terms suggest this question of a female identity all the more significant as it is for these women to rebuild. These looks on bruised female bodies, bruised through the fault of the enemy, undoubtedly testify to all the issues that represent the restoration of female identities for the social body, which struggle to think of the singular event that constitutes this return in number of heroines.
Heroines and martyrs: the multiple representations of an unprecedented figure
Many articles do not hesitate to describe these resistant income from the camps as heroines. The heroic act celebrated is then never very well defined: is it survival or resistance which then founds their heroism, which is not without questioning a possible crisis in male heroism, in a France which a few months earlier mowed women in public place?
The status of heroine of war is manifested beyond the comments in the columns of the daily newspapers. Some like Gisèle Guillemot for example, resistant from Calvados, deported for almost two years, are carried in triumph welcomed with hedges of honor, military parades and a speech of local elected officials. However, other representations are also necessary and overlap.
This is the role of the ideal of French women, well summarized for example in the last words of an article in Paris-Presse of April 15, 1945 which concludes: Heroines? Better, French women. Heroism, which is above all collective, must make it possible to embody this woman of the new Republic, both a figure of resilience and symbol of a victorious fight.
The fact remains that, in this moment of disorder, society is also looking for familiar representations, testifying to the difficulty of apprehending this extraordinary return. It is therefore most often the figure of the holy martyrdom, traditional, which will serve as an archetype to read this event, and freeze the image from this moment of the resistant repatriated.
In this liberated France, which revitalizes, it is undoubtedly difficult to envisage longer than time of return a female heroism, without martyrdom, without evocation of sacrifice. Martha Desrumeaux is described for example in the newspaper Maladder like: “tragic, powerful and as lit from the inside”. A canonization which puts in the background their commitment, their actions in the fight necessarily fading behind this other fight led for survival, also won.
Surviving, embodying the nation, and the honor of the found clan, the resistance fighters of deportation represent a political and social issue, by being almost a republican female avant-garde, which is almost gone in these lines that General de Gaulle writes to his niece just after his release: “Get back, now. France needs girls like you ”. The return of “girls” like Geneviève de Gaulle to their home ends up correcting an anomaly caused by war. And it is also this symbol that France decides to read there. The French woman, the real one, finally enters her home, in her place.
Finally, it is necessary for hundreds of them to take on a double role because many must bring the mourning of a resistant husband (shot or died in deportation) which will therefore add to the multiple statutes already endorsed: heroines, martyrs, survivors and mystical holy, French woman, that of woman of heroes, and carrier of memory.
With an unwavering passion for local news, Christopher leads our editorial team with integrity and dedication. With over 20 years’ experience, he is the backbone of Wouldsayso, ensuring that we stay true to our mission to inform.
