Lucie Odier

Lucie Odier (7 September 1886, Geneva – 6 December 1984, Geneva) was a Swiss nurse from a Patrician family background. She became a leading expert at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for relief actions to civilians. As only the fourth female member of the ICRC's governing body Odier helped to pave the way towards gender equality in the organisation which itself has historically been a pioneer of international humanitarian law.

During the Second World War she became an outspoken advocate inside the ICRC leadership to publicly denounce Nazi Germany's system of extermination and concentration camps.

After her resignation as a member for age reasons in 1961 she was appointed as the first female honorary vice-president of the ICRC. who was elected a member of the Council of States and of the National Council.

Lucie's father was Albert Octave Odier (1845-1928), a civil engineer working first at the Western Switzerland railways There he was responsible for the reconstruction of a number of bridges linking the Île de Genève and the Île Rousseau in the middle of the Rhone, which are still landmarks today. Lucie's mother Camille Jeanne Louise Chaponnière (1856-1927) came from Marseille, where Lucie's Genevan grandfather was a trader and judge at the commercial court. Lucie was the fifth of the seven children that Albert and Camille had. She was part of Geneva's patrician class which «turned to banking and philanthropic activities at the end of the 19th century, after losing control of the major public offices». The Odier family played a particularly important role in Geneva's financial sector thanks to marriages with other Patrician families and especially since Charles Odier (1804–81) became associated with the bank Lombard, Bonna & Cie in 1830, which later became Lombard, Odier & Cie. However, numerous other members of the family became medical doctors and nurses. she subsequently followed in that medical tradition and obtained her nursing diploma in 1914 from the School of the Samaritans.

Between the World Wars

In 1920, Odier was assigned to lead the social hygiene dispensary of Geneva's Red Cross section. It aimed to contain the spread of sexually transmissible diseases through sex education and the regulation of prostitution. In addition, she led the visiting nurses service.

Odier also became an active member of the Florence Nightingale Foundation, soon after it was founded in 1934 to provide post-graduate education to nurses in commemoration of Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), the English social reformer and founder of modern nursing.

A few days after the Anschluss – the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938 – Odier received from the exiled Austrian Princess Nora von Starhemberg, who was a Jewish actress and married to former Vice-Chancellor Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, a list with the names of 49 missing and/or detained people. However, President Huber stopped all efforts by Odier and her colleague Suzanne Ferrière to request information about the disappeared from the German Red Cross. working closely with Renée Bordier, who was likewise a nurse hailing from a prominent Patrician family of bankers (Bordier & Cie) and became the fifth-ever female ICRC-member in 1938.

World War II Undated photo of Odier, probably from the 1930s or 1940sAt the beginning of the Second World War Odier set up the and led the relief bureau and subsequently the relief division. Upon her return she reported that the British authorities lost all confidence in the effective application of the Geneva conventions by their Axis adversaries. Nevertheless, she managed to convince them to lift a blockade on foodstuffs destined to the POWs in Germany. thumb

Odier was widely considered to belong to the idealists within the ICRC leadership who gradually lost influence vis-à-vis the "pragmatists". The latter were led by Huber, who at the same time did private business in the arms industry. In contrast, when it came to Odier,«Her colleagues appreciated her humanitarian spirit, devotion, common sense, courage and tenacity. These qualities made her not an accommodating but a rather challenging member. Carl Jacob Burckhardt considered her as 'unintelligent and dangerously obstinate in delicate affairs'. [..] Odier courageously questioned several times a line of action which did not seem right to her, especially when legal considerations were overriding general humanitarian concerns.» thumb According to the historian Jean-Claude Favez, Odier was one of the ICRC members who were informed in August / September 1942 by Gerhart Riegner, the Secretary of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, about alarming reports on Nazi Germany's intention to mass murder the European Jews. By autumn of that year, the ICRC leadership received more information about the systematic extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe, the so-called Final Solution. A large majority of the ICRC's about two dozen members at its general assembly on 14 October 1942 – especially its four female members Frick-Cramer, Odier, Ferrière, and Bordier – was in favour of a public protest. Subsequently, her standing inside the organisation was diminished: when the executive committee established a department for special assistance to civilian detainees, Odier as well as her fellow experts Ferrière and Frick-Cramer were left out of it. In the same year she visited Berlin, when the German capital was subject to one of the first large-scale air raids by the allied forces. In the following year, she announced her resignation as a member of the ICRC for age reasons. She was subsequently elected not only as an honorary member of the ICRC but also as its honorary vice-president. When she died in her 99th year, the Journal de Genève called her the «grande dame» of the ICRC. The International Review of the Red Cross wrote in its obituary:«All who had the privilege of knowing and working with this great lady praised her dedication, perseverance, enthusiasm, unaffected manner and courage, and remember her with affection and gratitude.»

Odier is buried in Cologny – one of the most affluent municipalities in the Canton of Geneva – where also other former ICRC colleagues like Gustave Ador and Gautier-van Berchem have their graves. Her gravestone bears a verse from 1 John 2:10:CELUI QUI AIME SON FRÈRE DEMEURE DANS LA LUMIÈRE ("Whoever loves his brother remains in the light")

Selected works

Some advice to nurses and other members of the medical services of the armed forces, Geneva 1951 Medical personnel assigned to the care of the wounded and sick in the armed forces (training, duties, status and terms of enrolment), Geneva 1953