Marie-José Chombart de Lauwe

Marie-José Chombart de Lauwe (born 31 May 1923) is a French resistance fighter and sociologist. She was active as a resistance fighter in Brittany, was arrested in 1942, was interned in various prisons until being sent to Ravensbrück in 1942. There, she worked at the Siemens plant and in the Kinderzimmer before being evacuated in 1945 by the 'white bus' operation of the Swedish Red Cross. After returning from her internment, she became an influential sociologist and was active in advocating for the protection of human rights.

Early life Chombart de Lauwe was born in Paris on 31 May 1923. She is the daughter of Suzanne Wilborts, midwife, and Adrien Wilborts, a pediatrician of Flemish origin. Her father had been injured by gas from the trenches during the First World War. In her youth, she spent her vacations in Côtes-d'Armor, in Bréhat, where her grandmother lived. In 1936, her father took early retirement and the whole family moved to the island of Bréhat. Aged 12, she continued her studies on the island by correspondence.

During the 'phony war', she was a first-year student at Tréguier high school. (a resistance network with units in Tréguier, Lannion, Perros-Guirec and Paimpol). The group was led by Jean-Baptiste Legeay, a priest and teacher. The group was created by her mother and then integrated into the 'Georges France 31' network linked to British intelligence. The group provided aid to downed British aviators trying to escape to Great Britain and in the transmission to London of information on Germany's coastal defences.

On 24 February 1944, her father died at the Buchenwald concentration camp. She learned of his death after the war when she returned to France.

Chombart de Lauw described her work in the Kinderzimmer as follows:The two worst things I encountered in Ravensbrück were the ‘rabbits’, that's what we called the unfortunate women who were used in Nazi experiments, and the babies (...) They looked like old men. (...) I encountered the daily death of children and the despair of mothers. But it was my vocation: I had to save a few lives (...) It was a new resistance, but with so few results. Médaille de la Résistance française. 31 March 1947.