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' By STAN ELLIS
1 Daily Collegian Staff Writer
• Jeanne Le Blanc is a French professor
. .,at the University. Since coming here in
1.1663, she has taught thousands of
students the intricacies of her native
tongue.
.1 • Most class periods it's business as
usual, but often at least once during the
term Le Blanc's students refuse to open
their books.
Ars, They don't want to hear about the
French language. They want to hear
about French history Le Blanc, a
diminutive woman in her late fifties,
witnessed first hand a- tragic time_in
- France's, and the world's, history
World War 11.
But she not only watched it, she
atbarticipated in it. Le Blanc was a
member of the French Forces of the
I , Interior (FFI), an organization of
French countrymen dedicated to freeing
France from its Nazi invaders.
"I felt like a private first class," she
says with a light French accent. "The
ii i,priportant. role for girls and the elderly
'‘Y r was as liaisons, carrying messages. We
were less suspicious than young men.
"Girls did not do any sabotaging, like
cutting tracks or blowing bridges. That
was man's work."
But carrying messages could be a
dangerous business Le Blanc herself
'vas shot carrying a message the day
before her home town, Versailles, was
freed from German occupation.
"It was the day before the liberation of
Versailles, August 23, 1944. The Allies
were right outside of our town, and there
was shelling back and forth over our
'ads you know, a constant boom . . .
boom . . . boom," she said, moving her
hands in arcs from one chair arm to the
other.
Le Blanc said the Germans had been
ordered to shoot at anybody, military or
civilian
"It was my last message of the day, I
beard shooting close by and I took refuge
in a Red Cross building," she said.
"Across the street from where I was
hiding, there were barracks where
Germans were shooting from, only I
' didn't realize it.
}"There was a lull in the shooting, so I
thought I could get out. A janitor and I
walked to the front door, and they saw us
from across the street and shot at us.
"I felt something sharp in my right
side and I fell. We were always told that
if we were shot at to fall down, like. we
were dead."
Le Blanc said the janitor, an elderly
man, did not heed the advice and tried to
run.
"They opened fire on him. He died in a
hospital about two days later."
Between 200 and 300 civilians were
killed in Versailles that day, Le Blanc
I b paid. She considers herself very lucky to
Xne alive; the extent of her injury was
only a flesh wound in a "rather em-
barrassing place."
-:"I walked with a white flag, with the
irp - unded, and hobbled home," she said.
didn't want my parents to worry."
The next day her hometown was freed
My the Allies.
"The shelling had gone all night, and
my family and I were in the basement,"
Le Blanc said. "At about two in the
morning, there was complete silence.
"MY mother stood up and said, 'I am
ure we are liberated,' I can't come
j close to telling you what it felt like when
rshe said that."
Her mother went upstairs and saw a
} scene approaching, joyous chaos.
:1 Everybody was out in the streets
Ishauting, "The Germans have left!
yersailles will be liberated!"
IF The liberation came that day, August
Collegian living
the
daily
Resistance:
University professor fought for her country's survival in
24, 1944, and the citizens crowded the
streets jumping and kissing the Allied
soldiers according to Le Blanc.
"We got real cigarettes for a change,
and chewing gum. The Allies brought
food; even the K-rations were great."
Le Blanc said she - and her mother
made an American flag that had all the
stripes but only twelve stars.
"We only had material for twelve
stars, and we couldn't even make a
British flag. I hope your British readers
aren't offended by that."
But before the joy of the liberation,
there was much sorrow. According to Le
Blanc,- she became aware that
something terrible was going to happen
as early as 1936.
"The important role for
girls and the elderly was as
liaisons carrying messages.
We were less suspicious
than young men. "
"My parents were very much aware
that relations with Germany were
disastrous," she said. "They made a
determined effort to bring German and
French young people together. We had
German students stay with us every
summer.
"We had good relations until some of
the young Germans became members of
the Nazi party. Then things changed."
. When Le Blanc saw the Jews pouring
into France from Germany, she knew
the Nazis were attempting the
"destruction of a race."
In March of 1938, Austria fell into
German hands, and Le Blanc said it was
a day of mourning throughout Western
Europe.
"Once that happened, we could see no
hope," she said.
The Munich Pact followed: British
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
signed the pact to appease Hitler and
allow German occupation of
Sudetenland in a last-ditch effort to
prevent a full-scale war. It didn't work.
"The Munich Agreement tried to
maintain peace, but really it sold our
souls," Le BL4nc said. "It was con
sidered in France the sell-out of an in
nocent country."
In September, 1939, violating the
agreement Germany invaded Poland,
and France declared war on Germany.
But for eight months nothing hap
pened, Le Blanc said.
"My dad 'fixed the basement up
because we thought there would be
bombing the day after war was
declared, but it was quiet."
The calm did not last, though.
On June 14, 1940, Paris fell into Nazi
hands, and the Nazi occupation of
France was nearly complete, Le Blanc
said.
At this time, she said, the French
Resistance started to take shape.
"As a student," she said, "I first knew
of the role I might be during the war. It
was brought to my attention by fellow
students."
Le Blanc said the early days of the
Resistance were devoted to circulating
news from London, since all the French
newspapers had to print Nazi
propaganda, and to keeping the morale
of the French people from dying.
"What we did seems like so little, but
we had no papers or radio in France that
would tell the truth," she said. "We
would get up at two in the morning to
hear the radio from London because it
was jammed during the day. Then we
would transcribe it."
Le Blanc said she helped type 'and
distribute the news from London. She
would have been arrested had she been
caught.
She also served as a messenger bet
ween groups printing false papers for
Jews so they , could cross the border into
southern France which was unoccupied.
Nothing they did until the middle of
1941 even vaguely resembled military
activity, Le Blanc said.
But in the summer of 1941, the Nazis
attacked Soviet Russia and the numbers
of French sympathetic to and active in
the Resistance increased significantly.
"The working force in France was
sympathetic to Russia at the time
because of - their socialist ideas," Le
Blanc said. "Up until then they had not
been interested. Only the intellectuals in
France had been sympathetic to the
Resistance. But many joined after the
attack on Russia.
"They gave new body and force to the
Resistance," she said. "We became a
paramilitary force. We were more ac
tive, doing sabotaging and the like."
Another major military event oc
curred in 1941, Le Blanc said, that was
the turning point of the war Pearl
Harbor.
"We knew the Allies would win after
the United States entered the war," she
said. "It's a terrible thing to say,
especially to Americans, but there was
rejoicing in Europe that day. We had
been waiting for the United States to
enter for a long time."
While all this was going on in
ternationally, Le Blanc and her mother
became more involved with the
Resistance in France. She said her
mother did not hesitate to express her
views on English culture in her classes. '
She always tried to do anything she
could to help the oppressed, Le Blanc -
said.
"One day agents of the Gestapo came
to my mother's school to arrest two,
young girls in grade school," Le Blanc
recalled. The Germans needed the
addresses of the girls' parents because
they wanted to arrest them.
"My mother taught in the high school
section, but when she saw the agents she
tried to get all the teachers in the school
to stand up to them. She said, 'lf we all
stick together they won't take the
children.' '''
"My mother and two teachers were
the only ones willing to stick up for the
girls, so they were arrested," she said.
Both the other teachers were sent to
concentration camp: "Only one 'retur
ned."
These were dangerous times in the
Resistance after the events of 1941, Le
Blanc said, much more so than in the
early days.
Le Blanc remembered the story of a
friend who collected weapons to
distribute to the members of the FFI.
"Now that was really dangerous
work," Le Blanc said, "a lot more
dangerous than what I was doing.
Collecting and carrying those weapons
was a great danger to one's life."
Unfortunately, Le Blanc's friend was
caught, taken out into the yard of his
home and shot.
."After that happened," she said, "I
had to go and warn some of the other
members of the group. I am almost
positive the Nazis knew what I was doing
and I was watched."
Le Blanc said she was traveling from
Paris, where she went to school, to her
home in Versailles.
"I remember getting off the train,
walking up the street, and disappearing
in a side street. Whoever was following
me lost me there.
"After a few minutes," she said, "I
went to the house where these people
were staying and told them to leave.
They got out, and a couple of days later,
their house was searched. I also stayed
away from home for a couple of months
because it wasn't safe for my family if I
was at home."
But the closest call came about two
years later, in the winter of 1943.
Le Blanc said her mother was always
telling of the virtues of the cultures that
comprised the Allied forces while
teaching at her high school.
"She was known as somebody not in
sympathy with the Germans," Le Blanc
said, "and she was finally caught."
Le Blanc said the Nazis found her
'Mother's name in a notebook of someone
who had been arrested.
"That •was a stupid move in the first
place," Le Blanc said, voice rising a
little. "You never wrote anything down.
It was too dangerous if you were
caught."
Her mother was summoned to the
principal's office, and the Gestapo
agents started to ask her questions, Le
Blanc said. After the interrogation, the
agents said they were going to have to go
to their home and search it.
"We had many papers that were
criminal there, so my mother had to
figure a quick way of warning my father
and myself," she said.
Le Blanc said her mother agreed, but
that she had to go get her coat. For
tunately, the agents didn't go with her,
and she went to her cousin, who also
taught in the school, and asked her to
warn her husband and her daughter (Le
Blanc).
"My dad and I • went to work and
burned a lot of things in the furnace," Le
Blanc said. "We were just finished and
looking like nothing had happened when
the Gestapo's agents arrived with my
mother."
Le Blanc said her mother delayed the
agents at the school long enough to allow
her cousin to warn them, plus giving Le
Blanc and her father a good half hour to
destroy the papers.
"When the agents came they threw
everything in the house on the floor," she
Jeanne Le Blanc, a University French professor, was a terior, which fought against the German Army in oc
messenger and member of the French Forces of the In• cupied France in World War 11.
A weekly look at life
in the University community Thursday, March 8, 1979-15
said. "It looked like a huiricane had hit
the place."
Everything seemed all right until Le
Blanc glanced at the radio.
"The radio was not turned on, but it
was tuned to the BBC .(British Broad
casting CoMpany) from London," she
said. "If we had been caught with the
radio tuned to that station, we would
have been arrested."
Although it was tense during the
search, the agents never noticed the
radio.
Le Blanc said her mother was taken
away by the agents. When she left, they
had no idea if they would ever see her
again. But she called from the high
school the next day, informing her
family that she had been released.
"We were living in con
stant fear of being caught.
If the occupation had
lasted much longer, I'm
sure I wouldn't be
here today."
"She was going to teach that day, but
the principal told her to go home and get
some sleep," Le Blanc said, laughing.
' Le Blanc and her mother spent the rest
of the Nazi occupation relaying
messages and hiding young men who
refused to work in the factories making
weapons for the Germans.
"They could be arrested anywhere,"
she said. "The young men were caught
in places like subways and asked why
they weren't working, making German
guns.
The final period of the Nazi occupation
was the most dangerous time of all,
according to Le Blanc.
"We were living in constant fear of
being caught. If the occupation had
lasted much longer, I'm sure I wouldn't
be here today."
M '4..*.
r•
c ;
Illustration by Tom Mosser
World War II
But it did end. On August 25, 1944, the
day after the liberation of Versailles,
Paris was freed from Nazi hands, and
France was free.
"Our house in Versailles became
known as the American consulate after
the war," Le Blanc said. "Americans
were there all the time because my
family and I were bi-lingual. I had a
good time again. It was great."
In 1946, Le Blanc received a
scholarship from the American
Association of University' Women
(AAUW), which she said she is more
proud of than all her efforts in the war.
• "There were six scholarships ' for
women from occupied countries who
were good students and who had been
active in a resistance movement," she
said.
She came to the United States and
attended Columbia University. After her
stay here, she returned home to France,
but then came back and made the United
States her permanent home.
The proverbial happy ending seems to
apply to Le Blanc's life. She married
Alfred Le Blanc, who is also a French
professor at the University, and she has
been teaching French for fifteen years at
the University with him.
But all is not well in Le Blanc's world
"I see too many things happening that
I do not like. The Nazis seem to be
gaining strength again. That thing in
Illinois with the Jews was terrible.
"I realize this country is founded on
everyone having a right to say what they
want, but it is a shame to think the Jews
who have suffered so much, had to suffer
more at the hands of those people in the
American Nazi party."
The Americian Nazi party. staged a
demonstration and parade in Skokie,
Illinois, last year calling for such things
as the destruction of the Jewish race.
Skokie has a large Jewish community in
the town.
"I am telling this story not to brag, but
to let everyone in this community know
what went on during the war. We can't
let it happen again."
Photo by Randy Bonnet,