Marcelle Pardé

{{short description|Professor and French Resistance person of interest}}

Marcelle Berthe Pardé (1891 – 1945) was a French resistance fighter and officer. She received the Legion of Honour, the Croix de Guerre 1939-1945, bronze palm and the Médaille de la Résistance française after her death at the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Early life

Pardé was born in Bourgoin-Jallieu, France{{Cite web |title=Collection: Marcelle Parde materials {{!}} Archives & Manuscripts |url=https://archives.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/resources/bmc-1976-20 |access-date=2024-12-21 |website=TriCollege Libraries: Archives & Manuscripts}}Archives départementales de l'Isère, registres de l'État-civil :

{{Citation bloc|L’an mil huit cent quatre-vingt-onze et le quatorze février à deux heures du soir par-devant nous Volozan Pinet Ennemond, adjoint délégué, officier d’Etat-Civil de la ville de Bourgoin (Isère) est comparu M. Pardé Léon Gabriel Charles, âgé de vingt-six ans, garde général des Forêts, demeurant à Bourgoin, lequel nous a présenté un enfant de sexe féminin, né aujourd’hui à huit heures du matin en son domicile, rue Docteur Polosson, de lui déclarant et de Leboeuf Jeanne Augustine Louise, âgée de vingt-deux ans, sans profession, son épouse auquel enfant il a déclaré vouloir donner les prénoms de Marcelle Berthe. Les dites déclarations et présentations faites en présence de Messieurs Caral Jérôme soixante-cinq ans principal honoraire et Marthouret Michel cinquante-et-un ans notaire domiciliés à Bourgoin.

Après lecture du présent acte le déclarant et les témoins ont signé avec nous.}} on February 14, 1891.{{Cite web |title=Medailles {{!}} L'Ordre de la Libération et son Musée |url=https://www.ordredelaliberation.fr/fr/medailles?fulltext=marcelle%20parde |access-date=2024-12-21 |website=www.ordredelaliberation.fr |language=fr}}

Biography

File:Dijon_College_Marcelle_Pardé.jpg

Marcelle Pardé graduated from the École Normale Supérieure de Sèvres in 1914, in the middle of the war. Putting herself at the service of military hospitals in the École de Sèvres itself, then in Brittany, she finally found herself near her family in Chaumont where she was appointed to the boys' high school. She then spent her spare time acting as a nurse at the local military hospital. The headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force having moved to Chaumont in 1917, the family home accommodated two officers of General Pershing's General Staff.{{Cn|date=December 2024}}

In 1919, she accepted a position teaching French at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she taught until 1929. She returned to France to be closer to her mother whose health was declining,{{Cite web |last=Gagnant |first=Patrice |date=2022-08-08 |title=Ain. Enseignante et Résistante : Marcelle Pardé, l’engagement à en mourir |url=https://www.leprogres.fr/societe/2022/08/08/enseignante-et-resistante-marcelle-parde-l-engagement-a-en-mourir |access-date=2024-12-21 |website=www.leprogres.fr |language=FR-fr}} she obtained the Albert Kahn scholarship in 1930 to carry out an investigation into the state of French schools throughout the Middle East. This mission took her to Spain, Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Persia. She reached Baghdad and traveled through Persia by car from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean. On her return, a serious bout of malaria kept her in Aleppo for several weeks. She returned to France via Asia Minor, Constantinople, Yugoslavia and Austria.{{cite book|lang=French|author1=Albert Heuvrard|title=Mademoiselle Marcelle Pardé|series=Le Miroir Dijonnais et de Bourgogne|issue=189|year=1937|pages=4982-4983}} After a period of convalescence, she became director of the Edgar-Quinet girls' high school in Bourg-en-Bresse in 1932 then director of the girls' high school in Dijon in 1935.{{Cite web |title=Musée de la résistance en ligne |url=https://museedelaresistanceenligne.org/media7005-Plaque-la-mmoire-de-Marcelle-Pard-Dijon-Cte-dOr |access-date=2024-12-21 |website=museedelaresistanceenligne.org}}{{Cite web |title=Bourg se souvient |url=http://www.bourgenbresse.fr/content/download/23672/343365/file/var/bourg_en_bresse/storage/original/application/b9c5dceffc426de9fa262a6a59054802 |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20150923195244/http://www.bourgenbresse.fr/content/download/23672/343365/file/var/bourg_en_bresse/storage/original/application/b9c5dceffc426de9fa262a6a59054802 |archive-date=2015-09-23 |access-date=2024-12-21 |website=www.bourgenbresse.fr}} The war having been declared in 1939, her friends from Bryn Mawr, worried, quickly offered her a job in the United States, but she refused to leave her homeland in danger. The French government entrusted her with a delicate intelligence and French propaganda mission in Turkey in 1939.{{Cn|date=December 2024}}File:Marcelle_Pardé_Buchenwald_Arolsen_Archives_Doc_ID7675904.jpg

Shortly after returning from her mission in March 1940, she sought to make herself useful to France and, after June, to the Resistance. She enlisted in the French Fighting Forces in direct liaison with London in July 1942. From May 1943, she was a lieutenant within the Brutus network, coordinating the collection of military intelligence and coordinating with other resistant units.{{Cite book |last=Quack |first=Sibylle |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z6TbHxdc7pMC&pg=PA53&dq=%22Marcelle+Pard%C3%A9%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj7sfPbt7mKAxUwMjQIHVyoLUMQ6AF6BAgJEAI#v=onepage&q=%22Marcelle%20Pard%C3%A9%22&f=false |title=Between Sorrow and Strength: Women Refugees of the Nazi Period |date=2002-11-07 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-52285-4 |pages=53-54 |language=en}} Following arrests made in Paris in July 1944, she was arrested on August 3, 1944 with her secretary Simone Plessis.{{Cite book |last=Morrison |first=Jack G. (Jack Gaylord) |url=https://archive.org/details/ravensbruckevery0000morr/mode/2up?q=%22Marcelle+Pard%C3%A9%22 |title=Ravensbrück : everyday life in a women's concentration camp, 1939-45 |date=2000 |publisher=Princeton, NJ : Wiener |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-1-55876-218-3 |pages=128}} They were deported with her to Ravensbrück on August 15, 1944."Livre Mémorial des Déportés de France" de la Fondation pour la mémoire de la déportation Tome 3 {{p.|124}}[http://www.memorialgenweb.org/memorial3/deportes/complement.php?id=13045 MemorialGenWeb][http://www.memorialgenweb.org/memorial3/deportes/complement.php?id=13045 .org] - Marcelle PARDÉ Pardé died of exhaustion, famine and illness in January 1945. During the few months she had at Ravensbrück, she provided spiritual support at the camp, preventing her prisoner sisters from sinking into complete bestial brutality, giving them various and cultivated talks, imbued with serenity, which gave them the desire to be reborn.{{cite book|author1=Simone Bertrand|date=1965|language=fr|page=76|publisher=Les Éditeurs Français Réunis|title=Mille Visages un seul Combat, Les Femmes dans la Résistance}}

Honors and awards

Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (1946)
Croix de Guerre 1939-1945, bronze palm (1946){{Cn|date=December 2024}}
Médaille de la Résistance française (decree of October 15, 1945)
In 1945 Bryn Mawr College established the "Marcelle Pardé" scholarship.
The high school she ran in Dijon took her name at the end of the war, before it became a college in 1967. The vocational high school that grew out of her high school in Bourg-en-Bresse also bears her name.
In 2002, Marcelle Pardé was also granted the title of "Guardian of Life" by the French Association for Tribute to the Righteous in recognition of her determined action to safeguard her Jewish students during her years of resistance to the occupation.{{Cn|date=December 2024}}

Personal life

Her brother, {{interlanguage link|Maurice Pardé|fr}}, was a geographer known for his work on potamology and her sister, Isabelle Pardé (1900-1993), was a painter. Among his nephews, Émile Pardé (son of Maurice) joined the maquis of Oisans where he was killed on August 13, 1944, during the attack on Lake Poursollet.http://www.maquisdeloisans.fr/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Biographie-dEmile-Pard%C3%A9-V2.pdf Her great nephew Philippe Couillard was the Prime Minister of Québec from 2014 to 2018.

== References ==

Marcelle Pardé

Early life

Biography

Honors and awards

Personal life

Further reading