Women and their contributions to history are too often missing from social studies textbooks. World War II French freedom fighter Josette Molland needs to be added. In 1943, Josette Molland was a 20-year-old art student creating designs for Lyon silk weavers when she joined to French Resistance in an effort to defeat occupying German forces. She worked uncover on the Dutch-Paris network creating and distributing false documents. In 1944, Molland was captured in a raid by the Gestapo and deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. When she arrived in a cattle car, she saw a young woman being hanged in the courtyard as punishment for an infraction. While in Ravensbrück and later in Holleischen, Molland was severely beaten for assisting another women who had collapsed and she was beaten again after organizing resistance to mistreatment by the guards. At Holleischen, the women were made to wake up at dawn and stand at attention for hours. Anyone who fell was immediately shot. Molland survived by eating insects and the pulp from trees.
In May 1945, the women were liberated by the Polish resistance. German guards were lined up against a wall and those designated “salauds” or bastards by the prisoners were shot while the Frenchwomen sang the French national anthem “La Marseillaise.” Soon after American troops arrived. They distributed food and clothing and brought the women home to France.
In the 1980s, to keep the story of what happened in the camps alive, Molland used her talent as an artist to create a series of fifteen paintings in a folk-art style to show the horrors the women endured. Molland showed students her paintings when she spoke at schools about the French Resistance and the German concentration camps.
Josette Molland was buried in military funeral on February 28, 2024. She was 100 years old. “La Marseillaise” and “Chant des Partisans,” the song of the French Resistance, were sung at her funeral.
My friend, do you hear the dark flight of the crows over our plains?
My friend, do you hear the dulled cries of our countries in chains?
Oh, friends, do you hear, workers, farmers, in your ears alarm bells ringing?
Tonight all our tears will be turned to tongues of flame in our blood singing!
Climb up from the mine, out from hiding in the pines, all you comrades,
Take out from the hay all your guns, your munitions and your grenades;
Hey you, assassins, with your bullets and your knives, kill tonight!
Hey you, saboteurs, be careful with your burden, dynamite!
We are the ones who break the jail bars in two for our brothers,
hunger drives, hate pursues, misery binds us to one another.
There are countries where people sleep without a care and lie dreaming.
But here, do you see, we march on, we kill on, we die screaming.
But here, each one knows what he wants, what he does with his choice;
My friend, if you fall, from the shadows on the wall, another steps into your place
Tomorrow, black blood shall dry out in the sunlight on the streets.
But sing, companions, freedom hears us in the night still so sweet.
My friend, do you hear the dark flight of the crows over our plains?
My friend, do you hear the dulled cries of our countries in chains?