"Palais de Chaillot." A View on Cities: Sights and Attractions is Some of the World's Greatest Cities. Accessed November 21, 2017. http://www.aviewoncities.com/paris/palaisdechaillot.htm.

"Palais de Chaillot." PARiS: Official Website of the Convention and Visitors Bureau. Accessed November 21, 2017. https://en.parisinfo.com/paris-museum-monument/118358/Palais-de-Chaillot.

"Palais de Chaillot." Paris Walking Tours. Accessed November 21, 2017. http://www.paris-walking-tours.com/palaisdechaillot.html.

At the Palais de Chaillot, the end of the Musée de l'Homme resistance is signified. The fall of the resistance movement began with a series of arrests that were a result of a French priest and German informant betraying the group.[1] Vildé escapes to the unoccupied zone under the advice of Yvonne Oddon and Anatole Lewitzky[2] but returned shortly and was arrested.[3] Upon his arrest, German police found stencils of Résistance that had Agnés Humbert's fingerprints on them, resulting her arrest at her apartment in the Palais de Chaillot.[4] Humbert describes her arrest as such: "Then, between two sheets of paper, they discovered a third, left there by accident. Clearly written at the top were the words 'Copy and circulate'. It was the front page of Résistance, mercifully unfinished."[5] Paul Rivet, the director of the Musée de l'Homme was dismissed from his position for anti-Vichy sentiment. This saved him though as later that night his apartment at the top of the Palais de Chaillot was raided by German police, during of which Oddon and Lewitzky were arrested.[6] All of them were trialed on February 17, 1942: Humbert is charged for anti-German crimes with five years imprisonment in Germany, Oddon and Lweitzky both were to be executed for espionage though Oddon's sentence was commuted to five years imprisonment and lastly Vildé was sentenced to execution for espionage.[7] As for their ultimate fates, Vildé and Lewitzky requested they were executed last, and Humbert and Oddon spent the remainder of the war in concentration camps in Germany, returning to Paris afterwards.[8] The downfall of the Musée de l'Homme resistance is indicative of the role women had in the resistance, and how they were perceived. Females were equally tried alongside men, even in the case receiving the same sentences as shown by Lewitzky and Oddon being sentenced to execution. Clearly though, there was a difference in the ways women were perceived by the Nazis, as even though Humbert and Oddon were both highly involved in the resistance movement, Humbert was given a much lighter sentence and Oddon had hers commuted to the same. Ultimately, women were represented as equal parts of the resistance through the arrests, trials, and sentencing but were still treated more lightly in comparison to their male counterparts as shown by their ultimate fates.

[1] Margaret C. Weitz, Sisters in the Resistance: How Women Fought to Free France 1940-1945 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995), 232.

[2] David Shoenbrun, Soldiers of the Night: The Story of the French Resistance (New York: The New American Library, 1980), 112.

[3] Ibid, 115.

[4] Ibid, 117.

[5] Agnes Humbert, Resistance: Memoirs of Occupied France, trans. Barbara Mellor (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), 48.

[6] Schoenbrun 114.

[7] Ibid, 123.

[8] Ibid 123-124.

Throughout the course of the tour, it becomes increasingly clear that women were not only involved in the resistance movements of France, specifically the Musée de l'Homme resistance, but they took roles that were significant and held an amount of power comparable to the men they worked alongside of. Some of the important women who were involved included Yvonne Oddon, Germaine Tillion and Agnes Humbert. Oddon, while being a successful head librarian prior to the war, also was crucial to the resistance as she provided a guise for anti-Nazi meetings and brought in Boris Vildé who together, birthed the idea for the Musée de l'Homme resistance where she would be a primary aid to him. Tillion as well introduced key resistance members, two French World War I veteran colonels who would prove to act as resistance figures even after the fall of the Musée de l'Homme resistance, and she as well continued to resist even upon capture by teaching in the concentration camp she was kept in. Humbert is significant as she saw what she believed to be an injustice in her library, and helped with bringing herself and others into the Musée de l'Homme resistance and even took on dangerous tasks within the group outside of the feminine roles she had. Clearly, women were not simply passive in during the resistance, and this shows when they stood alongside their male counterparts when on trial and were convicted for espionage and sent to concentration camps within the Third Reich. While gender biases still existed within the resistance movements of France, it is clear through the Musée de l'Homme resistance that women were able to overcome some of these biases and take prominent roles and tasks in occupied Paris.

Ehrlich, Blake. The French Resistance 1940-1945. London: Chapman and Hall, 1966.