Biography:Claude Rodier
Claude Rodier | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Other name(s) | Claude Virlogeux |
| Born | Saint-Éloy-les-Mines, Puy-de-Dôme, France |
| Died | Ravensbrück camp, Germany |
| Allegiance | Free France |
| Service/ | MUR of Auvergne |
| Rank | Staff Sergeant |
| Spouse(s) | Pierre Virlogeux |
| Children | Jean and Marc Virlogeux |
Claude Rodier (born July 21, 1903 in Saint-Éloy-les-Mines, and died on November 11, 1944 in the concentration camp of Ravensbrück, Germany) was a physicist, and an officer in the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (MUR), part of the French Resistance in Auvergne.
Biography
Origins and education
Claude Rodier was born on July 21, 1903 in Saint-Éloy-les-Mines (Puy-de-Dôme) in a family of secular, republican teachers. Her ancestors had been miners, and one of her grandfathers died in a major mining catastrophe which sent the Combrailles region into mourning at the end of the 19th century.
A brilliant student, she enrolled in the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles in Sèvres in 1921,[1] where she took several courses taught by the physicist and antifascist Paul Langevin. She emerged as the youngest of the time to hold the agrégé degree —the highest in France—in physics.
Before the Second World War
After having taught for some time at Pamiers, she went to Riom where she became a teacher at a secondary school for girls. She married Pierre Virlogeux (fr), a young ceramic engineer, 28 August 1926 in Clermont-Ferrand. The couple had two sons: Jean (1927–2006) and Marc (1934–2008). In 1929, she and her husband started a ceramics business called Les Grès Flammés" (English: Fired Stoneware) where she put to work her expertise in physics and chemistry.
During the Second World War
In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, Rodier was approached by the United States embassy, which, given her knowledge of atomic physics, proposed that she immigrate to North America. Confident in the future of France, concerned with the family business and her young children, she did not agree to this proposition. In 1940, the available workforce diminished due to the numbers of war prisoners detained in Germany, and Rodier returned to teaching at the girls' school in Riom.
Arrest
Claude Rodier was arrested on February 8, 1944, with her husband and her two sons, Jean (17) and Marc (10). The children were released the same day. She was interned at the military prison of the 92nd Regiment of the French Infantry, with the wife of General André Marteau and Marie Pfister, grandmother of the writer Patrick Raynal with whom she would be deported to Ravensbrück by the transport departing from Paris-Romainville on May 13, 1944 (ID Numbers 39037 and 38971).[2] Marie Pfister would remain with her until her death.[3][4]
Deportation
After she arrived at the camp, another captive who had come separately from the 92nd Regiment told her of the suicide of her husband on the night of her arrest at the Anthéroche barracks in Riom.[5]
Claude Rodier remained at Ravensbrück for several weeks.[6] Also present were Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz, Odette Sansom, Margarete Buber-Neumann, and Germaine Tillion. The Nazis expected Rodier to participate as an atomic physicist in the German nuclear weapons program. Her refusal resulted in her being condemned to unloading coal barges on the Schwedt See, where she contracted pleurisy, from which she died November 10, 1944.[3][7]
Recognition
Upon returning to Germany, Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz carried Claude Rodier's glasses. She returned them to her parents, who still had not heard the fate of their grandson, Jean Virlogeux, liberated on May 6, 1945 from the Wöbbelin concentration camp by the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States and repatriated to France on July 29, 1945, after a stay at the hospital of Ludwigslust to treat typhus and advanced bone decalcification.[8]
After the war, the municipality of Riom changed the name of Riom-Châtelguyon avenue, which led from the city center to the SNCF train station, to avenue Virlogeux. On this avenue, a monument to Rodier and Virlogeux was erected. Upon a base of ceramic tile rests a slab of stone cut in the form of a menhir, containing a portrait of Claude Rodier in profile and topped with a bust of Pierre Virlogeux, both portraits being made by Virlogeux himself.
The 19th century park along this avenue was also renamed square Virlogeux in their honor.
The public high school of Riom, constructed on the site of the Anthéroche barracks where Pierre Virlogeux committed suicide and where his body was hidden by the SS of Clermont-Ferrand, was named lycée Pierre-et-Claude-Virlogeux.
Family
- Pierre Virlogeux
- Jean Virlogeux (1927–2006)
In 1940, as a French Scout, he participated in welcoming refugees into Riom. In 1943, he attempted, with a comrade, to join the maquis. Under the authority of his father, he participated in the Resistance in several capacities, including as a messenger and a receiver of airdrops.
On February 8, 1944, Jean Virlogeux had just celebrated his seventeenth birthday. After his arrest, he was violently shaken, notably by Ursula Brandt. Transferred to the 92nd Regiment's barracks in Clermont-Ferrand, he began a journey which, as a deportee under the German Nact und Nebel program, would take him to Compiègne-Royallieu (with a captivity in the Paris region to disarm bombs from the sorting station of La Chapelle), to the camp of Neuengamme, to the Kommando of Fallersleben, where he worked in Volkswagen factories as an electrical worker, ultimately to be liberated from the acmp of Wöbbelin by the troops of the 82nd Airborne Division on May 2, 1945.[9]
- Marc Virlogeux (1934–2008)
Marc was arrested at the age of seven with his parents and grandfather. Their ages being taken into account, he and his grandfather were liberated on the evening of February 8, 1944. He never saw his parents again, and remained ignorant of their fate until the Liberation for his father, and the liberation of the concentration camps for his mother. He was profoundly affected by this for the rest of his life.[10]
References
- ↑ À la mémoire des Sévriennes mortes pour la France. 1939–1945, 8 portraits hors-texte de Camille Charvet (née Kahn), Marie Talet, Marcelle Pardé, Marie Reynoard, Claude Virlogeux (née Rodier), Marguerite Flavien (née Buffard), Madeleine Michelis, Andrée Dana, Paris, imp. Guillemot, 1946
- ↑ [1][|permanent dead link|dead link}}]
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lettre à ma grand-mère, Patrick Raynal, Éditions Flammarion, pages 166 et suivantes
- ↑ Raynal, Patrick (December 18, 2013). Lettre à ma grand-mère. Flammarion. ISBN 9782081311367. https://books.google.fr/books?id=xU1YAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT98.
- ↑ http://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/puy-de-dome/rescape-shoah-retrouve-resistante-qui-sauve-1230345.html . L'information n'est acquise qu'au printemps 2017, les deux fils de Claude Rodier-Virlogeux, Jean et Marc, ignorèrent jusqu'à leur mort, que leur mère avait été informée, avant sa disparition du décès de leur père.
- ↑ "Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz, du camp de Ravensbrück à celui de Noisy". May 27, 2015. https://www.humanite.fr/genevieve-de-gaulle-anthonioz-du-camp-de-ravensbruck-celui-de-noisy-575007.
- ↑ Si c'est une femme – La vie des femmes à Ravensbrück, Sarah Helm, éditions Calmann-Levy, EAN : 9782702158098, https://books.google.fr/books?id=poq4CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT549
- ↑ Archives familiales de la famille Virlogeux. Disponibles en format numérique aux Archives municipales de la Ville de Riom et en cours de numérisation par les Archives départementales du Puy-de-Dôme.
- ↑ 15 mois aux mains de la Gestapo et des SS.
- ↑ Témoignage de Marc Virlogeux.
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