David Lonsdale

A pregnant French schoolteacher walked alone into the Gestapo headquarters in Lyon, France, sat down across from one of the most feared Nazi torturers in occupied Europe, and talked him into letting her marry her condemned husband — all to set up the escape she had already planned. Her name was Lucie Aubrac. She was 31 years old, five months pregnant, and she had exactly one weapon: nerve. By the summer of 1943, Lyon had become the most dangerous city in occupied France. The Gestapo had taken control. Klaus Barbie — the man they called the Butcher of Lyon — ran his operation out of the Hôtel Terminus, where prisoners were taken for interrogation and often never seen again. The city was full of informants. Every café, every street corner, every apartment block was watched. Lucie and her husband Raymond had been living double lives for three years. On the surface they were a history teacher and an engineer. Underneath they were two of the most active Resistance organizers in southern France. They had founded their own underground network — Libération-Sud — out of nothing, starting with chalk graffiti on walls and building it into a real fighting force. On June 21, 1943, Raymond was arrested at a secret Resistance meeting. He was taken to Montluc Prison and sentenced to death. The Nazis were in no hurry to kill him — they wanted information first — but the end was not in doubt. Lucie understood exactly what Montluc Prison meant. She had seen what happened to the people who went in and did not come out. So she went to see Klaus Barbie. She walked into the Hôtel Terminus alone. She told the receptionist she needed to speak to the officer who had sentenced her fiancé to death. She was admitted to Barbie's office. She sat down. And she told him a story. She was not Raymond's wife, she said. She was his fiancée. She was pregnant with his child. She was a respectable woman in a desperate situation. All she wanted was to marry him before he was executed — to give their baby a father's name, to save what little honor she had left. The story had just enough tragedy in it, just enough simplicity, that Barbie agreed. He granted permission for a prison wedding. What Barbie did not know was that Lucie had already assembled a commando team. On October 21, 1943, Raymond and fifteen other prisoners were loaded into a vehicle and driven through the streets of Lyon following the brief prison ceremony. They were heading back to Montluc. They never arrived. Resistance cars moved in from both ends of the street, boxing the convoy in. Armed fighters opened fire. Six German guards were killed in the ambush. The prisoner vehicle was smashed open. Raymond and the other prisoners were pulled out, bundled into waiting cars, and driven to safety. Lucie was six months pregnant when she led that raid. It was the only time during the entire Second World War that Gestapo personnel were attacked on the street in occupied France. After the ambush, the Aubracs fled to London, where their second child was born. Charles de Gaulle became the baby's godfather. After the war, a Vietnamese nationalist leader named Ho Chi Minh became godfather to their third child. The couple returned to France and lived ordinary and extraordinary lives side by side — teacher, engineer, parents, grandparents, witnesses to a century. Raymond and Lucie remained together for 68 years. Lucie died in Paris in 2007 at the age of 94. Raymond died five years later in 2012 at the age of 97. At the time of his death he was the last surviving member of the eight Resistance leaders arrested at that June 1943 meeting. In his final years, Raymond was asked many times what he wanted people to remember about Lucie. He always gave the same kind of answer. He said she was not reckless. She was not acting out of passion. She was a historian. She understood exactly what was happening and exactly what it meant. She just refused to accept it.