Madeleine Riffaud

Biography and cause of death of Madeleine Riffaud

Madeleine Riffaud (23 August 1924 – 6 November 2024) Madeleine Riffaud was a French poet and journalist, war correspondent. She was a member of the French Resistance during World War II. After World War II she reported on the Algerian War for a Paris newspaper, and then worked in Vietnam for the Viet Cong resistance for seven years.

Madeleine Riffaud Life

Riffaud was born in Arvillers on 23 August 1924; her parents were teachers. She grew up in the Somme region, surrounded by memories of the First World War. She went to school in Paris, and wrote poems.

Madeleine Riffaud World War II

Riffaud was age 15 when World War II was declared. In May 1940, the Luftwaffe strafed a column of refugees from the Somme in which she was fleeing for the unoccupied South-West. Following this, she decided to move to Paris and fight against Nazi Germany with the Resistance.

Riffaud met the Resistance in 1942 in Grenoble where she recovered from tuberculosis. She began operating for the French Forces of the Interior at the age of 18 under the codename “Rainer”, chosen after Rainer Maria Rilke. She participated in several operations against occupying Nazi forces, such as contributing to the capture of 80 Wehrmacht soldiers from an armored German supply train. On 23 July 1944 she killed a German officer, whom she shot dead in broad daylight on a bridge overlooking the river Seine.

Shortly afterwards, she was captured by a French collaborator, handed over to the Gestapo and taken to their headquarters at Rue des Saussaies before being transferred to Fresnes Prison. She was tortured, and a date was set for her execution, but she was eventually released in a prisoner exchange. She immediately returned to fight in the Resistance with the aim of freeing Paris from Nazi occupation. After the liberation of Paris, she and her comrades continued the fight against the Nazis until the end of the War.

Madeleine Riffaud Journalism and later life

After the war ended in 1945, Riffaud became a journalist for Ce soir, a French newspaper run by Louis Aragon. In Paris she met a group of writers and artists, such as Paul Éluard, who encouraged her to write, Vercors, and Pablo Picasso. Picasso drew her portrait for the cover of her first poetry collection, Le Poing Fermé (The Clenched Fist) which was published in 1945. She then reported on the Algerian War for the communist French newspaper L’Humanité. She was involved in an accident with a truck in Oran; her hands were injured and she lost a finger, and her forehead was injured, causing loss of vision in one eye and limited vision in the other.

In 1946, she met with Ho Chi Minh in Paris and vowed to devote her life to Vietnam. She moved to South Vietnam, and lived with the Viet Cong resistance for seven years, covering their fight during the Vietnam War. There, she published Au Nord-Vietnam: écrit sous les bombes and made a documentary film entitled Dans le maquis du Sud-Vietnam, documenting their methods of guerrilla warfare. She fell in love with Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Đình Thi, whom she met in 1951 in Berlin at an international meeting of youth for peace. She moved in with him when he was minister of culture in Vietnam, but then had to leave the country. Their distant relationship lasted for 50 years.

Upon her return to France, she worked as a nursing assistant in a Paris hospital. She wrote the best-seller Les Linges de la nuit, and published another anthology of poems, Cheval rouge: anthologie poétique, 1939–1972. In 1994 a curator found some of her poetry, partly written in prison, and convinced her to write a memoir giving them context; this resulted in the On l’appelait Rainer.

Riffaud became a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, awarded by Raymond Aubrac, in 2001. She was awarded the Ordre national du Mérite on 26 February 2013, for her contributions to France and the world. She received the Vietnamese Order of Resistance in 1984, and the Friendship Medal in August 2004.

Riffaud turned 100 on 23 August 2024. The Vietnamese ambassador to France visited her on the occasion.

Riffaud died on 6 November at her Paris apartment.

Madeleine Riffaud Writing and poetry

Riffaud wrote poetry throughout the war and during her career as a journalist. Her autobiographical account of her time in the Resistance was published in 1994 entitled On l’appelait Rainer, referencing the nom de guerre that she adopted during that time. She also starred in a number of documentaries about her life.

Madeleine Riffaud Publications

Le Poing fermé (1945), OCLC 221636699
Le Courage d’aimer (1949), OCLC 716456722
Les Carnets de Charles Debarge, documents recueillis et commentés par Madeleine Riffaud (1951), OCLC 491323883
Les Baguettes de jade (1953), OCLC 459821049
Le Chat si extraordinaire (1958), OCLC 726246392
Ce que j’ai vu à Bizerte (1961), OCLC 86154465
De votre envoyée spéciale… (1964), OCLC 3990784
Dans les maquis “Vietcong” (1965), OCLC 6092724
Au Nord-Vietnam : écrit sous les bombes (1967), OCLC 2846729
Nguyễn Đinh Thi : Front du ciel (Mãt trãn trên cao) (1968), OCLC 492328562
Cheval rouge : anthologie poétique, 1939–1972 (1973), OCLC 801235
Les Linges de la nuit (1974), ISBN 978-2-7509-0139-4
On l’appelait Rainer : 1939–1945 (1994), ISBN 978-2-260-01162-0
La Folie du jasmin : poèmes dans la nuit coloniale (2001), ISBN 978-2-908527-89-6
Bleuette (2004), ISBN 978-2-915293-12-8
In German
Riffaud, Madeleine; Morvan, Jean-David; Bertail, Dominique (2022). Madeleine, Kämpferin der Résistance (in German). Berlin: avant-verlag. ISBN 978-3-96445-080-7. Graphic novel

Source: Wikipedia