United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Union des femmes françaises (UFF, now known as Femmes solidaires) was created by former members of the Union des jeunes filles de France and Comité mondial des femmes contre la guerre et le fascisme after both groups were dissolved in 1939. Actions during World War II include organizing demonstrations and publishing underground newsletters. The UFF was officially organized by a congress in December 1944 at the initiative of the French Communist Party by Eugénie Cotton (1881-1967), Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier (1912-1996, survivor of Auschwitz and Ravensbrück), and Yvonne Dumont (1911-2002), with the participation of women’s committees active in the Resistance. Their first Congress, in June 1945, paid homage to Danielle Casanova (born Vincentelli Perini, 1909-1943), a Resistance member who was deported to Auschwitz in 1943 and died of typhus, and to Berty Albrecht (1893-1943), a member of the Resistance who died by hanging in the Fresnes prison following her arrest by the German military.
Copyright Holder: Ann Cornell
oversize folder box 1 1
The collection is arranged as one series.
The collection contains a portfolio of documents, fliers, leaflets, newsletters, photographs, and publications collected by a group of former partisans called the Union des Femmes Françaises and presented to Vice President Henry A. Wallace during a trip he made to France in April 1947. The collected materials were presented to him as mementos of the French Resistance during World War II, and wrapped in ribbon in a small Hermes suitcase. Also includes two poems by Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard; a letter and photograph of Jacqueline Quatremaire, a woman who was imprisoned in the Fort de Romainville concentration camp and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp where she perished; publications about French Resistance fighters France Bloch-Sérazin and Danielle Casanova; a prisoner prayer book; and a 1943 illegally published copy of Laurent Daniel’s Les amants d’Avignon. Many materials include cards with personal inscriptions to Wallace regarding the item.
Union des femmes françaises portfolio