Monique Saigal, an expert and author on women who served in the French Resistance, will speak on the College of Charleston campus on April 12 at 5:15 p.m. in Alumni Hall. This event is presented by the Alliance Francaise de Charleston and the College’s Department of French, Francophone and Italian Studies. The event is free and open to the public.
Monique Saigal, a professor of romance languages and literature at Pomona College in Claremont, CA, will discuss her recently published book, Héroïnes Françaises, 1940-1945: Courage, Force et Ingéniosité. A question and answer session will follow the discussion.
The book chronicles the stories of the eighteen French women who resisted the Nazi occupation. They are tied to Dr. Saigal’s own story as a Jewish child hidden with a Catholic family during the Second World War.
Dr. Saigal conducted interviews with these women, among others, in France, Switzerland, and California and recorded their stories: Lucie Aubrac, who freed her husband from a Nazi prison three times during the war, once by coordinating an attack on the prison van transporting him; Jeanne Bohec, who enlisted in the French free army in Britain where she invented explosives, parachuting into France to teach resisters how to make them for sabotage; and Brigitte Friang, who joined the Resistance while in high school, later decoding aerial operation transmissions.
While Héroïnes Françaises serves as a historical record, the book’s deeper purpose honors the courage of these women, the sacrifices of Dr. Saigal’s own family members who risked their lives in the Resistance, and the memory of her grandmother who died at Auschwitz. Their stories of courage and strength will serve to inspire.
For more information about the event, contact Robyne Vickers at 843.953.8063.
