Just a reminder that as the world seems to become more chaotic and more dangerous, we may have to think about doing things we wouldn't have dreamed of.
Odile de Vasselot, Teenage Aristocrat in the French Resistance, Dies at 103
During World War II, she deceived her watchful mother so she could take part in dangerous missions.
“One had to do something,” she said in an interview many years later. “One never has the right to just sit there and do nothing.”...
She took part in the famous student demonstration of Nov. 11, 1940, the first public act of resistance against the Germans in Paris, but chafed at how powerless she felt. “The Resistance was a fortress for me, and I couldn’t find the door,” she said in an interview in 2021.
Her chance came, she said, in June 1943, when a friend put her in touch with a member of a Resistance group known as the Zero network. (Other accounts offer a different chronology.) She was asked to deliver Resistance mail and newspapers to network members in Toulouse, taking the night train on Friday and returning the next day.
“I could have been struck by lightning, and I wouldn’t have been more shocked,” she said in a video interview with Agence France-Presse. “Because, at that time, young women were kept under close watch. Everything I did, I had to tell my mother about it.” But she accepted the mission, lying to her mother about her weekly absences. “Women had a lot of advantages,” she recalled. “They didn’t arouse suspicion.”
“The Germans didn’t think women could be underground.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/world/europe/odile-de-vasselot-dead.html
French Resistance fighter Odile de Vasselot dies aged 103
Determined to resist and oppose the occupiers, Odile declared to herself, "I want to do it!" Even though she was unsure how a young woman from a "good family" could contribute, her mind was set.
Both courageous and unaware of the dangers, she became a liaison agent, escorting escaped prisoners and allied airmen across France. She repeatedly avoided arrest.
https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/1545256/french-resistance-fighter-odile-de-vasselot-dies-aged-103
Odile de Vasselot, aristocratic French resistance agent who helped Allied airmen reach safety
‘The hardest part was lying to my mother about my activities, especially since I had to stay out two nights a week’
She was escorting two British airmen on a train from Lille to Paris when the Gestapo burst into the compartment and arrested the men. “The boys walked past me, didn’t wink at me, but looked at me,” she recalled. “I imagine they wanted to say thank you anyway, good luck... They were only prisoners of war and came back.
“What still amazes me is that the Germans didn’t know the conductor was a young girl. Since I was blue-eyed, blonde, and young they didn’t ask me anything.”
She still had the men’s ticket stubs in her pocket: “I ate them.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/odile-vasselot-aristocratic-french-resistance-050000980.html