Founder of the Azurean Resistance Museum, the communist from Nice, Henriette Dubois, has just passed away at the age of 98.
After the death of Arsène Tchakarian—former FTP-MOI of the Manouchian group—last month, Henriette Dubois, an activist of the Union of Young Women of France (a youth communist organization) during the Popular Front, then an FTPF liaison agent in the Southern Zone, left us yesterday in Villeneuve Loubet.
Founder of the Azurean Resistance Museum, the communist from Nice, Henriette Dubois known as Nelly, has just passed away at the age of 98. Born in 1920, this figure of local history dedicated her life to the ideals of progress and social emancipation.
An tireless defender of the memory of the Resistance within ANACR, an activist until her last breath for the communist Renaissance, national independence, antifascism, and peace.
Nelly—chosen in reference to the heroine of Quai des Brumes, played by Michèle Morgan on the first day of her clandestinity—thus traveled all over France, delivering messages, money, and sometimes weapons, right under the noses of the Nazis.
At the Liberation, Nelly emerged from secrecy and took part in the new administration of free France in Raymond Aubrac’s cabinet, then as a PCF municipal councilor in the suburbs of Paris.
In 1979, Nelly returned to Nice where she lived until the end of her days and helped found the Azurean Resistance Museum with Antoine Conso, René Gilli, and André Odru. In 1997, Rol-Tanguy awarded her the Legion of Honor, and she became an officer in 2012.
Until the last years of her life, this mother of a family, grandmother eight times, and great-grandmother just as many times, gave lectures and traveled across France for the National Association of Former Fighters and Friends of the Resistance, of which she was honorary president.
Indefatigable, keen on current affairs that concerned her, she would tell the youth: “What remains of our furious desire to live a future we could hope to be bright for us, our children, and grandchildren? By establishing the program of the National Council of the Resistance, it was working for peace and opening the way to a more just and progressive social order, where violence, racism, and xenophobia would have disappeared. I cannot forget my comrades shot one summer day in a flowered field or tortured to death; as long as I can, I will tell my grandchildren and great-grandchildren that they must know the past to preserve their future, that they must never accept servitude, and that they must fight for their dignity in all circumstances.”
A ceremony will take place this Friday at 9 a.m. at the Nice Saint-Augustin athenaeum.
