On the third of February 1905 the world became a better, warmer place ; for on that day Andrée Marthe Virot was born.
She came into this world by way of a religious and deeply patriotic French family and, by the time of her mid-thirties, ran her own beauty salon in Brest. She might have prospered here in peace. But here she was when the War came to France and here she stayed until she was arrested and taken, first to Paris, then to Ravensbruck and then to Buchenwald. In each place she was humiliated, she was tortured, she was left with injuries that pained her all the days of her long life. And, though having been betrayed herself, she betrayed no-one. Andree was marked for death several times and yet, by her own courage and by the bravery of others and by chance (if chance it was) she was spared.
And all this trouble she brought upon herself. Nobody obliged her to join the Resistance. Indeed, she began her life-work before the Resistance existed as such. Nobody compelled her to smuggle a hundred Allied airmen to safety through the enemy patrols and road-checks. Nobody obliged her to risk her life guiding British aircraft to lonely improvised landing strips. And at any time she was escorting those Allied airmen to the British submarines and boats that were to take them back to their homes, she might have escaped the nightmare herself. But she did not.
Andrée was one of those rare people who do not merely love their country, but are prepared to lay down their lives for it quite willingly. For to love is easy enough, while to die for the love of something greater than oneself is heroic. “A greater love hath no man than this ; that he lay down his life for a friend.” Yes, she loved her country ; and any who loved even in a small degree likewise was her friend.
After her release from Buchenwald, Andrée returned to Paris where she was welcomed by crowds singing the Marseillaise, and fulfilled a promise made in 1944 to make a pilgrimage to the Sacré Coeur church in Montmartre to thank God for her deliverance.
And on the fifth of February 2010, a week ago, the world became a cooler place, but cooler only by a little ; for she left behind an afterglow that will never fade, a warm memory that will never perish. May this God-loving and God-fearing lady rest in peace for evermore.
Andrée Peel (Virot)
