Mélanie Berger-Volle, figure of the Resistance, died at 105

Female figure of the Resistance, who became a tireless transmitter of memory to young people, Mélanie Berger-Volle died at the age of 105 in Saint-Étienne (east center) where she was based, the Loire prefecture announced Thursday, October 22. Of French and Austrian nationality, Mélanie Berger-Volle, born into a Jewish working-class family, became involved in the far left as a teenager against the Hitler regime, in her native Austria, then in Belgium and France.

The prefect of the Loire, François-Xavier Bieuville, salutes an “emblematic figure of the Resistance and tireless bearer of memory”, an active member of the Memorial of the Resistance and the deportation of this department. When France entered the war, all Austrians, even refugees, were seen as enemies and the authorities put her on a train heading to a camp near Pau. “At the Clermont-Ferrand station, I jumped” from the carriage, she said in 2024. The other girls do not dare to follow her.

In 1940, she found herself in Montauban (southwest), where a group of Trotskyist militants of which she was part before the war began to reform. Discreetly, the group wrote and distributed leaflets in German intended to turn back the soldiers of the Reich. In January 1942, she was arrested. During the interrogation sessions, “I was mistreated, men beat me,” she confided modestly.

After 13 months of detention in Toulouse (south-west), she was transferred to Baumettes in Marseille (south-east). Members of his group, along with the French resistance, then prepared his escape. On October 15, 1943, they came to get her, accompanied by a German soldier won over to the cause, while she was hospitalized for jaundice. “Escaped in a nightgown,” she smiled.

After the war, she married Lucien Volle, also a resistance fighter who participated in the liberation of Puy-en-Velay (center-east). Together, the couple began to devote themselves to memory work. “We fought continually to explain, not what we had done, but why we had done it,” underlined Mélanie Volle-Berger who used the names of Anna and Nelly within the resistance. Their maxim: “Resisting is essential. It is better to live on your feet than on your knees.

Carrying the Olympic flame at the age of 102 in June 2024 during the Paris Olympics, the alert centenarian then declared that she wanted to be a symbol for women “who fought to play sport like men”. “Resistance”, the first volume of a comic strip intended to popularize its message among schoolchildren, will have a sequel, entitled “Liberté”, “as planned with Mélanie, which will appear at the end of 2027”, indicated Thursday Michel Jacquet, director of Éditions Jarjille.