Mathilde Gabriel-Péri

Mathilde Gabriel-Péri
Member of the National Assembly
In office 1945–1958
Constituency	Seine-et-Oise
Personal details
Born	7 June 1902 Canet-en-Roussillon, France
Died	16 December 1981(1981-12-16) (aged 79) Paris, France
Political party	French Communist Party
Relations	Andrée Taurinya (great-niece)

Mathilde Rose Thérèse Gabriel-Péri (7 June 1902 – 16 December 1981) was a French politician. She was elected to the National Assembly in 1945 as one of the first group of French women in parliament. She served in the National Assembly until 1958.

Biography

Gabriel-Péri was born Mathilde Rose Thérèse Taurinya in Canet-en-Roussillon in 1902. Her sister Pauline married André Marty, a leading communist. She married Gabriel Péri, also a communist activist, in 1927. Although he was imprisoned two years later, he was elected to parliament in 1931 and re-elected in 1936. After the Nazi occupation of France, Gabriel-Péri was interred at Rieucros Camp; her husband was executed the following year.

Following the liberation of France, Gabriel-Péri was appointed to the Provisional Consultative Assembly in 1944. She was subsequently a French Communist Party (PCF) candidate in Seine-et-Oise department in the 1945 National Assembly elections. The first-placed candidate on the PCF list, she was elected to parliament, becoming one of the first group of women in the National Assembly. After being elected she became a member of the Civil and Military Pensions and Victims of War and Repression Commission and the Supply Commission. She was re-elected in the July 1946 elections, and was appointed as a High Court juror in July. Re-elected again in the November 1946 elections, she was made a titular judge in March 1947. She was re-elected in 1951 and 1956, serving in parliament until losing her seat in the 1958 elections.

Gabriel-Péri subsequently retired from politics and died in the Boulogne-Billancourt area of Paris in 1981.