Résistance :
A Woman’s Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France by Agnès Humbert,
translated by Barbara Mellor
“On 13 April [1941]
my diary ends”. Thrust into life in the Prison du Cherche-Midi, Agnès imagines
her death “Here lies Agnès Humbert, died 15 April 1941.” In 1945, months after
shedding her identity as a political prisoner and becoming a Nazi Hunter in
Germany, Agnès’ war ends.
In 1940 as the
Nazi’s tightened their grip around Paris and the rest of France, a group of colleagues
at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris decided to form a network that would become a
key member of the Resistance. Among them was respected art historian Agnès
Humbert. The group published and disseminated a newsletter called “Résistance”
which no doubt gave its name to the movement. In 1941 prominent members of the
group were arrested, imprisoned, and later tried and executed or deported to German
labor camps.
Agnès’ diary is
unique among resistance narratives. Her journal was first published in 1946,
soon after the end of the war. Part of the diary was written as events unfolded
(the first nine months or so of her account), but large parts of it were
written after the war’s end from memory. Julien Blanc explains that Résistance
features two types of writing—spontaneous diary entries and considered recollections
from memory. Unifying these types of writing is Agnes’ vivid, passionate tone.
