The resistance fighter Odette Nilès, "fiancée" of Guy Môquet, is dead

The communist resistance fighter Odette Nilès was the last survivor of the Choise camp. It was there that she had met Guy Môquet, her "fiancé", shot before the kiss she had promised him. She died on the night of May 26 to 27 at the age of 100.

For a long time, Odette Nilès had remained discreet about this ephemeral love affair with Guy Môquet. Here in January 2023 in Drancy. AFP - ALAIN JOCARD

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For a long time, she remained discreet about her budding romance with the young hero of the Second World War Guy Môquet. Even his son, born just after the war and named Claude-Guy, had learned only very late the origin of his surname. It was only in 2008, when President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that the last letter of this young man, symbol of the resistance to the German occupier, would be read in high schools, that Odette Nilès was asked by the media to tell the story of this love born in the internment camp of Choisel, in Châteaubriant, in the west of the France.

The 18-year-old was transferred there in September 1941, a month after her arrest in Paris. She meets Guy Môquet, a year younger than her, at the "barrier", the boundary between the men's and women's camps. On either side of this strip of land that separates the fences, the two young people exchange. He plays the harmonica, writes poems and soon has a crush on Odette. He asks her one day if she would give him a kiss. She agrees. He gives her a ring made from a coin. And gave him a sweet word of farewell before leaving for the platoon with 47 comrades on October 22, 1941: "I will die (...) Without having had what you promised me."

Leaflets and demonstrations

The daughter of workers, Odette Lecland was born on 27 December 1922 in Paris. At the age of three, she moved with her family to the suburbs of Drancy, in the northern suburbs of the capital. His father joined the PCF at the Congress of Tours. She was a member of the Red Aid and then of the Young Women of France. From the beginning of the war, the high school student distributed leaflets and participated in demonstrations on the Grands Boulevards in Paris. She was arrested by the French police on August 13, 1941 at the Richelieu-Drouot metro station on her way to one of them. At the same time as 16 boys. All were under the age of 20 and were court-martialed before the Germans. The death penalty is required. Three will be executed, the others imprisoned.

For nearly three years, Odette was interned in several camps. Until that of Mérignac, from where she escaped in 1944 and joined the resistance in Bordeaux. It was there that she met a certain Maurice Nilès, a young FFI (French Forces of the Interior) commander. Her future husband. After the war, he became deputy (1958-1985) and PCF mayor (1959-1997) of Drancy. She too remained faithful to her communist ideal all her life and campaigned for women's rights. Director of the secular patronage of the city of Aubervilliers, she met Yuri Gagarin and dined with Fidel Castro. For decades, she testifies in schools, tirelessly, to keep alive the memory of her classmates shot.

The last survivor of the Choisel camp had peacefully spent the 100-year mark at the end of December in her retirement home in Drancy. But remained haunted by this Marseillaise sung at the top of her lungs with the others to accompany their brothers to the platoon, this October 22, 1941. "Odette Nilès represented a century of commitment and freedom," President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to her on Saturday on the anniversary of the creation of the National Council of Resistance.

(

With AFP)

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• France
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