NEWS

A Non-Jew's Escape
From The Gas Chambers

Madeleine Michaud, a Catholic French
Resistance fighter, was marked for death
at Mauthausen.

RICK HELLMAN

Special to The Jewish News

PHOTO © GLEN CALVIN MOON

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34

FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 1991

WE'RE
FIGHTING FOR
YOUR LIFE

American
Heart
Association

•

-

n 1945, Madeleine
Michaud was taken to the
gas chambers in the
Mauthausen concentration
camp. But, unlike more than
119,000 of her fellow in-
mates, she survived.
"They were ready to turn
the gas on us when the Red
Cross came;" said Ms.
Michaud, 70, during an
interview in her Kansas
City, Mo., home. "They had
locked the doors. But when
the Red Cross came, they
had to let us go."
It wasn't her first brush
with death, but it was
perhaps the closest Ms.
Michaud came to being
killed during her two years
as a prisoner of the Nazis.
Ms. Michaud, a Roman
Catholic, said she was not
victimized by the Nazis be-
cause of her religion, but be-
cause of her French
Resistance activities. Today,
she tells her story to adults
in church and university
classes.
"I like to talk about it be-
cause we forget too easily,"
Ms. Michaud said.
Dr. Joseph Schultz, direc-
tor of the Danciger Judaic
Studies Program at the Uni-
versity of Missouri-Kansas
City, has had Ms. Michaud
talk to his classes about the
Holocaust. He said Ms.
Michaud is a remarkable
woman with a cheerful per-
sonality.
"It has to do with her
outlook on life," he said.
"She is a very deeply re-
ligious woman . . . I think it
was the ethical imperative of
her faith that led her into
the Resistance."
The only child of a military
family, Ms. Michaud was
born in Paris and educated
at the Sorbonne. She earned
a doctoral degree in Euro-
pean history in 1939, just as
World War II began.
During the Nazi occupa-
tion of France, Ms. Michaud
joined the French Resistance
movement, first as a secre-
tary and later as a hotel
clerk.
"It was very exciting, very

Rick Hellman is a staff writer
for the Kansas City Jewish
Chronicle.

scary," said Ms. Michaud of
those days. "You would get a
phone call saying to meet
somebody with a red hat or a
carnation at the station. You
went and got (a package) and
passed it on, not knowing
who you were dealing with,
so that if you were caught
. . . you were fairly fail-safe.
But it didn't save me from
being arrested on April 6,
1943."
Ms. Michaud said her ar-
rest was "just like in the
movies — at 3 a.m. came the
knock at the door, and there
was the Gestapo and the
French police."
She was taken to a securi-
ty prison at Fresnes, outside
Paris, where she was inter-

"At least we had
the comfort of
knowing we had
done something. It
Was like gambling
you lose, you
pay."

Madeleine Michaud

rogated and beaten. She was
then placed in solitary con-
finement for six months
before being transferred to
the Nazi concentration camp
for women at Ravensbruck,
Germany, near the Baltic
Sea.
Some of the Frenchwomen
had their heads shaved, Ms.
Michaud said, and all of
them were stripped and
issued clothing with red
triangular arm patches
signifying their political
prisoner status. The women
were then placed in quaran-
tine barracks.
"We looked out and saw all
those women standing
there," she said, "wearing
their striped uniforms, look-
ing skinny and scared. And
we said, `Uh-oh. We're really
in trouble now.' "
It was shortly after her ar-
rival in Ravensbruck that
Ms. Michaud had her
primary contact with Jewish
prisoners.
"Some Jewish ladies from
Theresienstadt shared our
block," Ms. Michaud said.
"They were so charming. I
was 23, and they looked an-
cient to me. At least we had
the comfort of knowing we
had done something. It was
like gambling — you lose,