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Marcelle Pardé

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Marcelle Berthe Pardé (1891 – 1945) was a French resistance fighter. She received the Médaille de la Résistance française after her death at Ravensbrück.

Early life

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Pardé was born in Bourgoin-Jallieu, France[1][2] on February 14, 1891.[3]

Biography

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Marcelle-Pardé College in Dijon

Marcelle Pardé graduated from the École Normale Supérieure de Sèvres in 1914, in the middle of the war. Putting herself at the service of military hospitals in the École de Sèvres itself, then in Brittany, she finally found herself near her family in Chaumont where she was appointed to the boys' high school. She then spent her spare time acting as a nurse at the local military hospital. The headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force having moved to Chaumont in 1917, the family home accommodated two officers of General Pershing's General Staff.[citation needed]

In 1919, she accepted a position teaching French at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she taught until 1929.[1] She returned to France to be closer to her mother whose health was declining,[4] she obtained the Albert Kahn scholarship in 1930 to carry out an investigation into the state of French schools throughout the Middle East. This mission took her to Spain, Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Persia. She reached Baghdad and traveled through Persia by car from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean. On her return, a serious bout of malaria kept her in Aleppo for several weeks. She returned to France via Asia Minor, Constantinople, Yugoslavia and Austria.[5] After a period of convalescence, she became director of the Edgar-Quinet girls' high school in Bourg-en-Bresse in 1932 then director of the girls' high school in Dijon in 1935.[6][7] The war having been declared in 1939, her friends from Bryn Mawr, worried, quickly offered her a job in the United States, but she refused to leave her homeland in danger. The French government entrusted her with a delicate intelligence and French propaganda mission in Turkey in 1939.[citation needed]

Marcelle Pardé's registration card in Buchenwald then Ravensbrück.

Shortly after returning from her mission in March 1940, she sought to make herself useful to France and, after June, to the Resistance. She enlisted in the French Fighting Forces in direct liaison with London in July 1942. From May 1943, she was a lieutenant within the Brutus network, coordinating the collection of military intelligence and coordinating with other resistant units.[8] Following arrests made in Paris in July 1944, she was arrested on August 3, 1944[7] with her secretary Simone Plessis.[8][9] They were deported with her to Ravensbrück on August 15, 1944.[10][11] Pardé died of exhaustion, famine and illness in January 1945.[7] During the few months she had at Ravensbrück, she provided spiritual support at the camp, preventing her prisoner sisters from sinking into complete bestial brutality, giving them various and cultivated talks, imbued with serenity, which gave them the desire to be reborn.[12]

Honors and awards

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  • Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (1946)[6]
  • Croix de Guerre 1939-1945, bronze palm (1946)[citation needed]
  • Médaille de la Résistance française (decree of October 15, 1945)[3]
  • In 1945 Bryn Mawr College established the "Marcelle Pardé" scholarship.[1]
  • The high school she ran in Dijon took her name at the end of the war, before it became a college in 1967. The vocational high school that grew out of her high school in Bourg-en-Bresse also bears her name.[7][4]
  • In 2002, Marcelle Pardé was also granted the title of "Guardian of Life" by the French Association for Tribute to the Righteous in recognition of her determined action to safeguard her Jewish students during her years of resistance to the occupation.[citation needed]

Personal life

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Her brother, Maurice Pardé [fr], was a geographer known for his work on potamology.[6]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "Collection: Marcelle Parde materials | Archives & Manuscripts". TriCollege Libraries: Archives & Manuscripts. Retrieved 2024-12-21.
  2. ^ Archives départementales de l'Isère, registres de l'État-civil :

    L’an mil huit cent quatre-vingt-onze et le quatorze février à deux heures du soir par-devant nous Volozan Pinet Ennemond, adjoint délégué, officier d’Etat-Civil de la ville de Bourgoin (Isère) est comparu M. Pardé Léon Gabriel Charles, âgé de vingt-six ans, garde général des Forêts, demeurant à Bourgoin, lequel nous a présenté un enfant de sexe féminin, né aujourd’hui à huit heures du matin en son domicile, rue Docteur Polosson, de lui déclarant et de Leboeuf Jeanne Augustine Louise, âgée de vingt-deux ans, sans profession, son épouse auquel enfant il a déclaré vouloir donner les prénoms de Marcelle Berthe. Les dites déclarations et présentations faites en présence de Messieurs Caral Jérôme soixante-cinq ans principal honoraire et Marthouret Michel cinquante-et-un ans notaire domiciliés à Bourgoin.
    Après lecture du présent acte le déclarant et les témoins ont signé avec nous.
  3. ^ a b "Medailles | L'Ordre de la Libération et son Musée". www.ordredelaliberation.fr (in French). Retrieved 2024-12-21.
  4. ^ a b Gagnant, Patrice (2022-08-08). "Ain. Enseignante et Résistante : Marcelle Pardé, l'engagement à en mourir". www.leprogres.fr (in French). Retrieved 2024-12-21.
  5. ^ Albert Heuvrard (1937). Mademoiselle Marcelle Pardé. Le Miroir Dijonnais et de Bourgogne (in French). pp. 4982–4983.
  6. ^ a b c "Musée de la résistance en ligne". museedelaresistanceenligne.org. Retrieved 2024-12-21.
  7. ^ a b c d "Bourg se souvient". www.bourgenbresse.fr. Archived from the original on 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2024-12-21.
  8. ^ a b Quack, Sibylle (2002-11-07). Between Sorrow and Strength: Women Refugees of the Nazi Period. Cambridge University Press. pp. 53–54. ISBN 978-0-521-52285-4.
  9. ^ Morrison, Jack G. (Jack Gaylord) (2000). Ravensbrück : everyday life in a women's concentration camp, 1939-45. Internet Archive. Princeton, NJ : Wiener. p. 128. ISBN 978-1-55876-218-3.
  10. ^ "Livre Mémorial des Déportés de France" de la Fondation pour la mémoire de la déportation Tome 3 p. 124
  11. ^ MemorialGenWeb.org - Marcelle PARDÉ
  12. ^ Simone Bertrand (1965). Mille Visages un seul Combat, Les Femmes dans la Résistance (in French). Les Éditeurs Français Réunis. p. 76.

Further reading

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  • "Le Lycée pendant l'occupation (1939-1944)" in: Le Lycée de Jeunes Filles de Dijon, 1897-1967, by Marie-Jeanne Ormancey, paperback published by the Collège Marcelle Pardé, school cooperative, in 1998.
  • Bulletin des Anciennes Élèves du Lycée Marcelle-Pardé de Dijon, année 1967: a brief biography (3 pages) written by a companion of the School of Sèvres of Miss Pardé.
  • Family archives of Hélène Pardé-Couillard, niece of Marcelle Pardé. Hélène Pardé herself studied at Bryn-Mawr in 1954-1955 as a "Marcelle Pardé" scholar.
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