Melanie Berger lived in Vienna with her Jewish parents and sister. She was politically active from the young age of 13, taking part in meetings of banned left-wing groups. She trained as a corset maker. After Austria’s “Anschluss” to the German Reich in 1938, she fled to Belgium with friends, by now 16 years old. She crossed the French border disguised as a boy and moved to Paris.
After the war began she was expelled from Paris. She escaped internment in the Gurs camp by taking a job as a housemaid.
She was reunited with her friends in Montauban, where they produced flyers together and distributed them to Wehrmacht soldiers. In January 1942 she was arrested and sentenced to 15 years’ forced labor. After a year imprisoned in Marseille, she was able to send a secret message to her boyfriend, who arranged her liberation when she was treated in hospital for jaundice in October 1943. Disguised as Gestapo officers, her friends succeeded in freeing her from there. She continued her resistance activities on her release.
Melanie Berger stayed in France after the war. At the age of 102, she carried the Olympic torch in St. Étienne for the 2024 Paris games.
Melanie Berger disguised as a boy at the time of her escape from Belgium to France, 1939. Source: Privatbesitz/Private, Wikimedia Commons, Lizenz CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Report by Melanie Berger on her escape from prison, published in the underground newspaper “Spartakus” in February 1944. Source: Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes, Wien, 22067
Report by Melanie Berger on her escape from prison, published in the underground newspaper “Spartakus” in February 1944. Source: Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes, Wien, 22067
Melanie Berger on the Canebière, Marseille’s main shopping street, April 1946. Source: Privatbesitz/Private, Wikimedia Commons, Lizenz CC BY-SA 3.0 de
