Madeleine Riffaud

Madeleine Riffaud
Riffaud in 1944
Born	(1924-08-23)23 August 1924 Arvillers, France
Died	6 November 2024(2024-11-06) (aged 100) Paris, France
Occupations	Resistance fighter Writer Journalist War correspondent
Works	Le Poing Fermé On l'appelait Rainer
Awards	Ordre national du Mérite Friendship Medal of Vietnam

Madeleine Riffaud (23 August 1924 – 6 November 2024) was a French poet, journalist and war correspondent. She fought in the French Resistance during World War II. After World War II she reported on the Algerian War for the Communist newspaper L'Humanité, and then worked in Vietnam for the Viet Cong resistance for seven years.

Her first poetry collection, Le Poing Fermé (The Clenched Fist), including poems written in prison, was published in 1945. A memoir giving them context, On l'appelait Rainer (Called Rainer), appeared in 1994.

Life

Riffaud was born in Arvillers on 23 August 1924; her parents were teachers. She grew up in the Somme region, surrounded by memories of the First World War. She went to school in Paris, and wrote poems.

World War II

Riffaud was 15 when World War II was declared. In May 1940, the Luftwaffe strafed the refugee column from the Somme in which she was fleeing for the unoccupied South-West. Following this, she decided to move to Paris and fight against Nazi Germany with the Resistance.

Riffaud met the Resistance in 1942 in Grenoble where she recovered from tuberculosis. She began operating for the French Forces of the Interior at the age of 18 under the codename "Rainer", chosen after Rainer Maria Rilke. She participated in several operations against occupying Nazi forces. On 23 July 1944, she killed a German officer, whom she shot dead in broad daylight on a bridge overlooking the river Seine. She was captured by a French collaborator, handed over to the Gestapo and taken to their headquarters at Rue des Saussaies before being transferred to Fresnes Prison. She was tortured, and a date was set for her execution, but she was eventually released in a prisoner exchange. She immediately returned to fight in the Resistance, she contributed to the capture of 80 Wehrmacht soldiers from an armored German supply train. After the liberation of Paris, she and her comrades continued the fight against the Nazis until the end of the War.

Journalism and later life

After the war ended in 1945, Riffaut met in Paris a group of writers and artists, including Paul Éluard, who encouraged her to write, Louis Aragon, Vercors, and Pablo Picasso. She became a journalist for Ce soir, a newspaper run by Aragon. Picasso drew her portrait for the cover of her first poetry collection, Le Poing Fermé (The Clenched Fist) which was published in 1945. She became a war correspondent reporting from the Algerian War for the Communist French newspaper L'Humanité. She was involved in an accident with a truck in Oran; her hands were injured and she lost a finger, and her forehead was injured, causing loss of vision in one eye and limited vision in the other.

In 1946, she met with Ho Chi Minh in Paris and vowed to devote her life to Vietnam. She moved to South Vietnam, and lived with the Viet Cong resistance for seven years, covering their fight during the Vietnam War. There, she published Au Nord-Vietnam: écrit sous les bombes and made a documentary film entitled Dans le maquis du Sud-Vietnam, documenting their methods of guerrilla warfare. She fell in love with Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Đình Thi, whom she met in 1951 in Berlin at an international meeting of youth for peace. She moved in with him when he was minister of culture in Vietnam, but then had to leave the country. Their subsequent long-distance relationship lasted for 50 years.

Upon her return to France, she worked as a nursing assistant in a Paris hospital. She wrote the best-seller Les Linges de la nuit, and published another anthology of poems, Cheval rouge: anthologie poétique, 1939–1972. In 1994 a curator found some of her poetry, partly written in prison, and convinced her to write a memoir giving them context; this resulted in the book On l'appelait Rainer.

Riffaud became a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, awarded by Raymond Aubrac, in 2001. She was awarded the Ordre national du Mérite on 26 February 2013, for her contributions to France and the world. She received the Vietnamese Order of Resistance in 1984, and the Friendship Medal in August 2004.

Riffaud turned 100 on 23 August 2024. The Vietnamese ambassador to France visited her on the occasion.

Riffaud died on 6 November at her Paris apartment.

Writing and poetry

Riffaud wrote poetry throughout the war and during her career as a journalist. Her autobiographical account of her time in the Resistance was published in 1994 entitled On l'appelait Rainer, referencing the nom de guerre that she adopted during that time. She also starred in a number of documentaries about her life.

Publications

• Le Poing fermé (1945), OCLC 221636699
• Le Courage d'aimer (1949), OCLC 716456722
• Les Carnets de Charles Debarge, documents recueillis et commentés par Madeleine Riffaud (1951), OCLC 491323883
• Les Baguettes de jade (1953), OCLC 459821049
• Le Chat si extraordinaire (1958), OCLC 726246392
• Ce que j'ai vu à Bizerte (1961), OCLC 86154465
• De votre envoyée spéciale... (1964), OCLC 3990784
• Dans les maquis "Vietcong" (1965), OCLC 6092724
• Au Nord-Vietnam : écrit sous les bombes (1967), OCLC 2846729
• Nguyễn Đinh Thi : Front du ciel (Mãt trãn trên cao) (1968), OCLC 492328562
• Cheval rouge : anthologie poétique, 1939–1972 (1973), OCLC 801235
• Les Linges de la nuit (1974), ISBN 978-2-7509-0139-4
• On l'appelait Rainer : 1939–1945 (1994), ISBN 978-2-260-01162-0
• La Folie du jasmin : poèmes dans la nuit coloniale (2001), ISBN 978-2-908527-89-6
• Bleuette (2004), ISBN 978-2-915293-12-8

In German

• Riffaud, Madeleine; Morvan, Jean-David; Bertail, Dominique (2022). Madeleine, Kämpferin der Résistance (in German). Berlin: avant-verlag. ISBN 978-3-96445-080-7. Graphic novel

Further reading

• Chiaroni, Keren (2017). Resistance Heroism and the End of Empire. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-22731-6.
• Gubser, Alexandra (25 August 2019). "Sie nannte sich Rainer – 75 Jahre Befreiung von Paris". Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF) (in German). Retrieved 8 November 2024.
• Koltermann, Ulrike (12 January 2023). "Widerstandskämpferin Madeleine Riffaud : "Ich habe die Nazis gehasst, nicht die Deutschen"". Der Tagesspiegel (in German). Retrieved 8 November 2024.

Obituaries

• "Madeleine Riffaud, French resistance heroine and war correspondent, dies at 100". The Jerusalem Post. 8 November 2024. Retrieved 8 November 2024.

External links

• Madeleine Riffaud at IMDb