- Document ID: 7732302
- Document Collection: 1-1-5-4_individuelle Unterlagen Frauen Buchenwald
- Link to Online Archive: https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/7732302
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https://gw.geneanet.org/jacueline?lang=en&n=roberton&oc=&p=andree&type=fiche
‘You were beautiful for eternity!’ The women of the Barbie trial - Virtual exhibition from 11 May to 4 July 2021
Andrée Roberton-Meaudre de Sugny
Andrée Roberton-Meaudre de Sugny takes the stand with modesty hanging around her neck. Small in stature, wearing a red jacket that makes her look like Little Red Riding Hood, hidden behind her bowl-cut hair and bifocals, she seems the very picture of kindness. Her voice is soft and simple, and not a single word competes with another. Yet her apparent shyness does not detract from the exceptional account she gives to the Assize Court.
Andrée was the daughter of a silk merchant from Lyon. A pharmacist who had settled in Marseille before the war, in 1937 she married a young aristocrat, Jacques Meaudre de Sugny, whose iconoclasm had led him to go against his background by joining the Communist Party. A member of the Resistance based in Saint-Just-en-Chevalet, in the Forez region, during the Occupation, he made his wife proud when, on 6 June 1944, he proclaimed the ‘Republic of Annonay’, liberating the town before sending Pétain, who was visiting Saint-Etienne at the time, a telegram informing him of his dismissal and summoning him to appear before a court. The Nazis made Andrée, his wife, who was hiding Resistance fighters on the estate, pay dearly for this audacity.
On 7 July 1944, the Militia arrived at the family château. With timidity and a kind of pity, Andrée remembers the looting, Darnand’s men taking her away with her daughter’s little goat, rabbits, chickens and vegetables from the garden. Taken to Roanne and then to Lyon, Andrée was handed over to the Gestapo. Barbie’s men were obsessed with locating Jacques, her husband, and avenging the affront of the provisional liberation of Annonay. This petite woman, crushed by the Nazi machine, remained silent and refused to submit.
Andrée was sent to Ravensbrück on the convoy of 11 August 1944. Despite her ordeal, she did not make accusations and stuck to the facts. She did not have Barbie directly in front of her, but his men. On the platform at Perrache station, she remembers seeing SS officers but does not risk identifying him without certainty. While she is on the train to hell, on 12 August her husband becomes the first prefect of the liberated Ardèche. They are reunited after the war.
Andrée Roberton-Meaudre de Sugny died in Saint-Just-en-Chevalet on 27 January 2010, at the age of 98.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
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