On this date in 1943, French resistance heroine France Bloch-Serazin was executed by the Germans in Hamburg.
Bloch-Serazin English Wikipedia entry | French) was a Jewish Communist who had supported the Spanish Republican cause, so she was right in line for some official persecution after the Germans blitzed France.
No longer employable as a chemist, she put her training to good use manufacturing explosives in her apartment. (Today, a plaque in the 19th arrondissement marks the building.)
Arrested by French police on May 16, 1942, she was condemned to death by a German military court but deported to Germany to suffer that punishment. Her husband, Fredo Serazin, was subsequently murdered by the Gestapo in prison.
As France Bloch-Serazin was born in 1913, she has recently enjoyed a renewed appreciation around the centennial of her birth, including the homage (French link) of her native city of Poitiers.
On this day..
- 1728: Joseph Barret - 2020
- 1945: Walraven van Hall, banker to the Resistance - 2019
- 1584: Five Catholic priests - 2018
- 1584: Five young thieves - 2017
- 1661: Maeyken de Smet, Olsene witch - 2016
- 1858: Henry Fife and Charlotte Jones, exonerating Monroe Stewart - 2015
- 2012: Three drone strike spies in Yemen - 2013
- 1937: Tom Steinbock and Juan Mirbol in Sartre's The Wall - 2012
- 2004: Former vice-governor Wang Huaizhong - 2011
- 1554: Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days' Queen - 2010
- 2003: Richard Edwin Fox, bogus job interviewer - 2009
- 1942: Avraham Stern, a strange bedfellow - 2008
- Themed Set: Unruly Britannia - 2008
une magnifique heroine francaise digne de jeanne d arc ;les nazis et les collabos etaient vraiment des monstres;