Germaine Tillion, a resistant in love with truth

She was an ethnologist and, for her, that meant everything: “Because we are interested in something other than ourselves. We will look for the other.” This life turned towards others took root in the mountains of Algeria in the 1930s. The young ethnologist settled for six years in one of the poorest Berber tribes. She returned to Paris, occupied by the Germans and, without waiting, she acted. With his mother, they do intelligence. Sold to the Nazis by a traitor, they will be deported to the Ravensbrück camp in Germany. Strong in character, she will even do an ethnographic survey of the camp where she is.

After the war, she tirelessly testified about Nazi crimes. Then on those of Stalin and those committed in Algeria. She denounces both the torture against Algerian fighters and the attacks of the latter. She will plead for France to stop the executions of FLN leaders. She managed to make herself heard by General de Gaulle who took the decision in January 1959 to pardon all those sentenced to death. Germaine Tillion had a conviction that nothing could shake: she was against the death penalty. In 2015, she returned to the Panthéon with her Resistance companions.