She was tall and somewhat overweight, and she liked to tease.
Arriving from Ajaccio to do her dental studies in Paris, Danielle became active in the various student associations. The Casanovas had no children and were ardent communists. Danielle had been to Moscow and returned more persuaded than ever of what communism might do for the impoverished French workers. In the evenings and at weekends, she wrote passionate articles calling on young women to rise up and engage in the great political debates of the day. She had no time for anyone who did not believe in absolute equality between men and women. She was, as Cécile would later say, as straight and honest as it was possible for a person to be.
The Jeunes Filles de France perfectly mirrored the healthy outdoor mood of the Front Populaire. When she found time, Danielle arranged to meet her friend Maï Politzer in a cafe and the two young women talked about how appalled they were by the squalor and poverty in which so many French working-class families lived. Sometimes they were joined by Marie-Claude, a handsome, strong-willed girl who had been married to Paul Vaillant-Couturier, editor of L’Humanité . Marie-Claude’s father was a well-known newspaper editor and publisher, and her mother wrote on fashion and cooking. Marie-Claude was a reporter and photojournalist herself, and in the 1930s Vu magazine had published a series of her photographs on Dachau, the first concentration camp opened by Hitler, not far from Munich. Paul, who was much older, had left his wife for her. He had died in 1937.
Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, ‘Femme Tricanet’
In the offices of the JFdeF, near the Paris Opéra, where Danielle produced a newsletter calling on women to donate clothes and milk for Spanish war children, a team of similarly minded young women often gathered to talk. A few took evening classes in Russian. Though serious, they were not averse to having fun, and Danielle readily made people laugh. The fund-raising dances they gave proved very popular. By the outbreak of war, the JFdeF had over 20,000 members.
A gathering of the Jeunes Filles de France, shortly before the war
During the nine months of the phoney war, their torches dimmed by the blue paper used by French schoolchildren to cover their books, Danielle and her colleagues walked the streets writing messages about free speech and workers’ rights on the walls. The blackout was very helpful for this kind of clandestine work. When issues of the magazine she edited for the JFdeF were ready, she gave them to students and schoolchildren to distribute. Danielle was a natural organiser.
The arrival of the Germans only served to spur her on to greater efforts. Everything in her revolted at the thought of occupation. Within hours she had prudently cleared her offices of all incriminating papers. During the long hot summer of 1940, Danielle and the other members of the JFdeF went bicycling in the forests around Paris, and after playing games of volleyball sat in the grass talking about what they could do to make the lives of the Germans harder. Some of the young men who went with them grew moustaches to make themselves look older; the girls took to wearing dark glasses. They were outraged when a friend reported that he had seen a poster in the local swimming pool with the words: ‘No Negroes, Jews or dogs’.
In the autumn, when the schools and universities reopened, the members of the JFdeF volunteered to distribute the Underground copies of L’Humanité . There were angry scenes when parents discovered stashes of the paper hidden away in their daughters’ bedrooms. Maroussia Naitchenko, who as a 14-year-old helped out in the offices by the Opéra, would later write that it sometimes seemed as if all these young people were ‘playing at games of cops and robbers’.
Pétain’s view of women as ideologically and politically inferior beings made Danielle’s recruits extremely angry. Soon hundreds of new
Arriving from Ajaccio to do her dental studies in Paris, Danielle became active in the various student associations. The Casanovas had no children and were ardent communists. Danielle had been to Moscow and returned more persuaded than ever of what communism might do for the impoverished French workers. In the evenings and at weekends, she wrote passionate articles calling on young women to rise up and engage in the great political debates of the day. She had no time for anyone who did not believe in absolute equality between men and women. She was, as Cécile would later say, as straight and honest as it was possible for a person to be.
The Jeunes Filles de France perfectly mirrored the healthy outdoor mood of the Front Populaire. When she found time, Danielle arranged to meet her friend Maï Politzer in a cafe and the two young women talked about how appalled they were by the squalor and poverty in which so many French working-class families lived. Sometimes they were joined by Marie-Claude, a handsome, strong-willed girl who had been married to Paul Vaillant-Couturier, editor of L’Humanité . Marie-Claude’s father was a well-known newspaper editor and publisher, and her mother wrote on fashion and cooking. Marie-Claude was a reporter and photojournalist herself, and in the 1930s Vu magazine had published a series of her photographs on Dachau, the first concentration camp opened by Hitler, not far from Munich. Paul, who was much older, had left his wife for her. He had died in 1937.
Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, ‘Femme Tricanet’
In the offices of the JFdeF, near the Paris Opéra, where Danielle produced a newsletter calling on women to donate clothes and milk for Spanish war children, a team of similarly minded young women often gathered to talk. A few took evening classes in Russian. Though serious, they were not averse to having fun, and Danielle readily made people laugh. The fund-raising dances they gave proved very popular. By the outbreak of war, the JFdeF had over 20,000 members.
A gathering of the Jeunes Filles de France, shortly before the war
During the nine months of the phoney war, their torches dimmed by the blue paper used by French schoolchildren to cover their books, Danielle and her colleagues walked the streets writing messages about free speech and workers’ rights on the walls. The blackout was very helpful for this kind of clandestine work. When issues of the magazine she edited for the JFdeF were ready, she gave them to students and schoolchildren to distribute. Danielle was a natural organiser.
The arrival of the Germans only served to spur her on to greater efforts. Everything in her revolted at the thought of occupation. Within hours she had prudently cleared her offices of all incriminating papers. During the long hot summer of 1940, Danielle and the other members of the JFdeF went bicycling in the forests around Paris, and after playing games of volleyball sat in the grass talking about what they could do to make the lives of the Germans harder. Some of the young men who went with them grew moustaches to make themselves look older; the girls took to wearing dark glasses. They were outraged when a friend reported that he had seen a poster in the local swimming pool with the words: ‘No Negroes, Jews or dogs’.
In the autumn, when the schools and universities reopened, the members of the JFdeF volunteered to distribute the Underground copies of L’Humanité . There were angry scenes when parents discovered stashes of the paper hidden away in their daughters’ bedrooms. Maroussia Naitchenko, who as a 14-year-old helped out in the offices by the Opéra, would later write that it sometimes seemed as if all these young people were ‘playing at games of cops and robbers’.
Pétain’s view of women as ideologically and politically inferior beings made Danielle’s recruits extremely angry. Soon hundreds of new
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