WUNRN
In the Women’s Rights Movement, & with Women Human Rights Defenders, & Women in Poverty, We Pledge Solidarity, Advocacy, Dignity
International Movement ATD Fourth World
http://www.atd-fourthworld.org/Genevieve-de-Gaulle-Anthonioz-Our.html
Genevieve de
Gaulle Anthonioz : “In the Concentration Camp, & Against Extreme
Poverty, Our Only Weapon against Humiliation Is Fraternity & Solidarity.”
May 27, 2015, Paris: Genevieve de
Gaulle Anthonioz – resistance fighter, deportee to Ravensbrück concentration
camp, and ardent human rights activist – will enter France’s secular mausoleum
the Pantheon today, alongside 3 other members of the French Resistance. In 1958
she took up cause with ATD Fourth World founder Joseph Wresinski, alongside
families who struggled with courageous resistance themselves in the face of
crushing poverty and exclusion. President of ATD Fourth World – France for 34
years, Genevieve de Gaulle helped build an international movement with a
message for the world: “Extreme poverty is violence; it is a denial of
humanity. We must unite to eradicate it.” Below her own words recount a part of
her journey and reveal a lasting strength of commitment.
Of her
internment in Ravensbrück concentration camp, Genevieve de Gaulle Anthonioz
wrote in The Dawn of Hope
– A Memoir of Ravenbruck of the brutality, despair,
resistance, courage and hope that she witnessed and through which she passed
during the year and half she spent there. (Original 1998 French title: La
Traversée de la Nuit, roughly translated excerpt below):
As we went
into the camp, it was as if God remained outside. By the dim light we caught a
glimpse of women carrying heavy vats. […] I was struck to the core by the look
on their faces…Never had I seen people so indelibly marked by cruel suffering.
As human beings, though still alive, they had already lost every trace of
expression. […] I was struck with the absolute certainty that there was indeed
a fate far worse than death: the crushing of our souls, which was the purpose
and goal of the concentration camp.
Her
encounter in 1958 with Fr. Joseph Wresinski and families in the emergency
housing camp of Noisy-le-Grand, France, took her back to that Ravensbrück
experience:
There is
no doubt, the expression which I read on the faces of the men and women [in
Noisy-le-Grand] was the same as that which I had long read on the faces of my
fellow deportee comrades at the Ravensbrück camp. I read the humiliation and
despair of human beings struggling to preserve their dignity. […]
I saw this
marginalization, this rejection suffered by the families as a great injustice.
Opposition to this was why I had fought in the Resistance and during the
deportation. We had struggled for the dignity of every human being and for
their rights and value to be recognized. I came to discover a world apart, a world
that had nothing to do with the one that I frequented daily. I never imagined
such distress. Hundreds of men and women living crammed one on top of the other
in the mud, yes, in the mud.
1950’s: The
emergency housing camp of Noisy-le-Grand
In
1964 Genevieve de
Gaulle Anthonioz became president of ATD Fourth World in France, promoting
from that position for some 34 years the voice and experience of families in
deep poverty. She never ceased to relate her experiences at Ravensbrück with
what those families revealed to her:
To counter
the cruelty, hatred, and the oppression of the human soul in that concentration
camp, we had nothing but fraternity, solidarity. That is what wins out in the
end because it’s more powerful than anything else. And what families in poverty
teach us day after day—with the means they have, with the relationships they
build amongst themselves, and with us allies and the outside world (whom they
could rightly detest being themselves are so unjustly plunged into deep
poverty)— is just that: fraternity and solidarity.
And in 1998,
after ten years of work to promote new legislation on poverty and social
exclusion in France, de Gaulle Anthonioz alluded to her journey, in speaking to
the French government’s advisory Economic and Social Council:
On this
evening after the final adoption of the new strategic law against poverty and
social exclusion, I am remembering everything that I have learned from people
in poverty. Overcoming with them the most difficult of times, having to dig
deep within myself, I am indebted to them for teaching me that the secret of
hope is fraternity.
The entry
into the Pantheon of French Resistance members Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz,
Pierre Brossolette, Germaine Tillion and Jean Zay is being covered extensively
by French media. A standing exposition detailing the commitments and legacy of
each is open to the public. In honor of Genevieve de Gaulle, who died in 2002,
a diverse delegation of ATD Fourth World members is participating today’s
procession and ceremony in Paris. (click for
France24’s article.)