Name Gabrielle Weidner | Died February 17, 1945 | |
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Gabrielle Weidner (Brussels, 17 August 1914 - Königsberg in der Neumark, 17 February 1945) was a Dutch resistance fighter playing an active role in the French Resistance during World War II.
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Early life
Gabrielle Weidner was born in Brussels as the daughter to Dutch parents. She grew up in Switzerland, close to the French border at Collonges-sous-Salève - a village in the French department of Haute-Savoie where her father, Johan Henry Weidner Sr. taught Latin and Greek at the Seventh-day Adventist Church. She was sent to secondary school in London and as a result of her bi-lingual background, spoke several languages.
Activities during World War II
As a devoutly religious girl, she was living and doing church work for the Seventh-day Adventists in Paris at the outbreak of World War II. With the ensuing German occupation of France, she fled with her brother Jean Weidner and several others to Lyon, in the unoccupied part of France. Following the 22 June 1940 signing of the agreement with the Nazis to create Vichy France, she returned to Paris while her brother went to Lyon where he established the "Dutch-Paris" underground.
In Paris, she resumed her work for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, from which she secretly with the help of her brother and other volunteers coordinated escapes for Dutch-Paris. As a significant contributor to the French resistance she has been responsible for the rescue of at least 1,080 persons, including 800 Dutch Jews and more than 112 downed Allied airmen.
Arrest
In February 1944, a young female courier was arrested by the French police and extradited to the Gestapo. Against all rules, she had a notebook with her containing names and addresses of Dutch-Paris members. She was brutally interrogated by a guard that held her head under cold water repeatedly. Under torture she revealed many names of key members of the underground network. As a result, a large number of Dutch-Paris members were arrested. The name of Jean's sister, Gabrielle, was among those in the notepad. She was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Fresnes prison in Paris, as it was hoped that her comrades would try to free her. In Fresnes she was treated fairly good, but when this trap did not work, she was shipped by railway cattle car to a concentration camp at Ravensbrück in Germany.
She entered Königsberg / Neumark, a women's subcamp of Ravensbrück. The camp was called Petit-Königsberg by the French prisoners to distinguish the village in Neumark from the city Königsberg in East Prussia. In this concentration camp, the conditions were inhumane, and she was subjected to hard labor and beatings by camp guards. On 17 February 1945, several days after the liberation by Soviet troops, Gabrielle died in Königsberg / Neumark from the effects of malnutrition.
Recognition
On 24 May 1950, Gabrielle Weidner posthumously received the Dutch Cross of Resistance for her efforts in the war. On the Dutch Orry-la-Ville honorary cemetery (north of Paris), her name is recorded on a plaque dedicated to the Dutch resistors.