Marguerite Gonnet

Marguerite Gonnet (13 October 1898 - 27 May 1996)^[1] was a member of the French Resistance during World War II. She was from the city of Grenoble in southeastern France. At age forty-four, married with nine children, she joined the resistance group Libération-sud.^[2] She became the head of the resistance cell in the department of Isère.^[3] She was one of the only female heads of a resistance cell, along with Marie Reynoad.^[4]

In April 1942, she was arrested by the Nazis for carrying illegal newspapers.^[1] A German military prosecutor asked Gonnet why she had taken up arms against France's occupiers, to which she said, "Quite simply, Colonel, because the men had dropped them".^[2] This quote was used by American author Sarah Rose as the epigraph of her 2019 book D-Day Girls.^[5] Gonnet was sentenced to two years in prison, and her leadership role in the resistance was taken up by Jean Weber.^[6]

She died in Paris on 27 May 1996 at the age of 97.^[1] There is a street in Grenoble named after her.^[1] In 2020, author Olivier Vallade published a book about Gonnet Marguerite Gonnet: Déterminée à Sortir de l’ombre (English: Marguerite Gonnet: Determined to Emerge from the Shadows).^[4]

References

1. "19 MAI 1942 : LA LEÇON DE COURAGE DE MARGUERITE GONNET" [19 MAY 1942: THE LESSON OF COURAGE OF MARGUERITE GONNET]. Grenoble Le Changement (in French). 19 May 2016. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
2. Shonfield, David (26 November 2015). "Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance". Counterfire. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
3. Lowe, Keith (2017). The fear and the freedom: how the Second World War changed us (1st U.S. ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-1-250-04395-5.
4. "Marguerite Gonnet: Déterminée à sortir de l'ombre". Culture.Isḕre (in French). Retrieved 14 April 2021.
5. Rose, Sarah; Recorded Books, Inc (2019). D-day Girls: the untold story of the female spies who helped win World War II. New York: Crown. ISBN 978-0-451-49510-5. Retrieved 2019-08-26. {{cite book}}: |first2= has generic name (help)
6. Douzou, Laurent (1995). La désobéissance: histoire d'un mouvement et d'un journal clandestins, Libération-Sud, 1940-1944 [Disobedience: History of a clandestine movement and newspaper]. Histoire / Editions Odile Jacob (in French). Paris: O. Jacob. p. 460. ISBN 978-2-7381-0293-5.