Sawt Falasteen - Austrian-born French resistance fighter dies aged 105: regional official

Born into a working-class family in Vienna in 1921, Melanie Berger-Volle settled in France after World War II and became an energetic voice for preserving the memory of the events among young people.

She was "an iconic figure of the resistance and a tireless conveyor of memory", said Francois-Xavier Bieuville, the top regional official in the Loire region of central France.

As a Jew linked to left-wing groups, she rushed to leave Austria when it was annexed by Nazi Germany.

When France entered the war, all Austrians -- even those who were refugees -- were viewed as enemies, and the authorities put her on a train bound for a camp near the southern city of Pau.

"At Clermont-Ferrand train station (in central France), I jumped" from the carriage, she told AFP in 2024. The other girls did not dare to follow.

When the Nazi forces defeated and occupied France, she joined a left-wing group which wrote and distributed leaflets in German encouraging the occupying forces to change sides.

Known to the French resistance by her codenames "Anna" and "Nelly", she was arrested in January 1942. During interrogations, "I was mistreated; men beat me," she remembered with characteristic reserve.

After 13 months in prison in the southwestern city of Toulouse, she was transferred to Les Baumettes prison in Marseille.

But members of her group, working with the French Resistance, organised an extraordinary escape.

On October 15, 1943, accompanied by a German soldier who had been won over to their cause, they came to spring her from prison while she was hospitalised with jaundice. "I escaped in my nightgown," she said with a smile.

After the war, along with her husband, Lucien Volle, himself a resistance fighter, she worked on preserving the memory of what had happened, visiting schools into old age.

"We constantly worked to explain not what we had done, but why we had done it," she said. "To resist is essential. Better to live standing tall than on one's knees."

Passing her centenary did not halt her activities. At the age of 102 she carried the Olympic flame ahead of the 2024 Paris Games, saying she wanted to be a symbol for women "who fought to do sport like men".

Y.Shaath--SF-PST