-The video is in Spanish-

A long time has passed, but finally we are able to honor the courage of Magdalena Truel Larrabure, a Peruvian native who joined the French Resistance during World War II.

Thanks to journalist Hugo Coya’s research that was published in his book Final Station, Magdalena’s life came alive in a documentary directed by Luis Enrique Cam.

Magdalena Truel fought against the Nazi occupation in France by forging documents for the Resistance. In 1944, Magdalena was captured and tortured, but she never confessed anything. She died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1945.

The Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, an educational NGO devoted to promoting solidarity and civic courage, decided to honor Magdalena Truel.

“We cannot just overlook such a paradigm of humanitarian efforts. The Wallenberg Foundation will honor this silent hero, as well as those who uncovered her legacy” was declared by Baruch Tenembaum and Eduardo Eurnekian, founder and chairman of the foundation respectively.

Who was Magdalena Truel?

During the World War II, twenty three Peruvian native people were victims of the Nazi regime. Only one of them was not Jewish and her name was Magdalena Truel.

While living in occupied France, Magdalena enrolled in the Resistance movement. It has been estimated that she was instrumental in saving, directly or indirectly, the lives of dozens of Jews from death.

However, her story was buried for 65 years.

Ms. Truel was born on August 29, 1904 in Lima, Peru. She was the daughter of a French immigrant couple. She attended a religious catholic school and became deeply observant of her faith.

In 1924 she traveled to Paris and studied at the Sorbonne University until the war out broke. The Nazis invaded France in 1940. Magdalena stayed in France to fight the injustice that surrounded her, despite the fact that she could have gone back to Peru since she was a citizen of both France and Peru, and was not Jewish. She lost a leg in an accident, but nonetheless she joined the resistance and began the extremely dangerous task of forging documents.

Magdalena was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and imprisoned. They say that she used to answer the Nazi tortures with, “I will only answer to God.”

At the beginning of 1945 she was deported to Sachenhausen concentration camp, where she died on May 3, 1945 during one of the “death marches” organized by the Germans in an effort to empty the camps when the Allies were marching towards Germany.

Before she was buried, one of her fellow inmates put a Jewish bracelet around her wrist, and another inmate put a bunch of red and white geraniums to symbolize the colors of the flag of Peru.

The name Magdalena Truel is engraved on the “Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation”, monument remembering the French citizens who were deported from France during the war, which is located in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Resources

• Land-Weber, Ellen. TO SAVE A LIFE: STORIES OF HOLOCAUST RESCUE. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
• Block, Gay and Drucker, Malka. Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust. New York: TV Books. 1992.
• Drucker, Malka, What Do We Owe the Righteous Gentiles?
• The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous
• George Duncan’s Women of the Third Reich
• Women As Rescuers, Resisters and Partisans
  By Richard A. Gair, Shirley Bennett and Joan Horn for
  The New Jersey Council for the Humanities ”Women and the Holocaust” Seminar
• Women and the Holocaust
• The Holocaust
• Wikipedia
• Rescuing Jews in National Socialist Germany 1933-1945
  Research project of the Center for Research on Antisemitism
  Technical University Berlin
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

However, the worth of these men is not determined by the number of people they saved but by each individual life. If one compares the number of people killed during the Holocaust with the number of people saved, it may seem relatively few. Though intuitively this calculation does not make sense. Any calculation of human life is offensive, because every life represents unlimited potential. Therefore every individual saved, every act of dissent was noble and courageous.

It is in this light that one can consider the incalculable contributions of female saviors of the Holocaust. Numerous women, through acts of dissent, acts of courage and ingenuity, saved lives. These women, many of them known only to those who they saved, showed the courage and humanism of well-known saviors such as Wallenberg.

Another thought to consider when reading these stories is the type of person each of these women was and the challenges they faced. It is this consideration that makes their stories relevant today and for all of history. It may be surprising that as one reads these accounts it seems as though these women are no different than many people we know. These women worked factory and office jobs in the cities, raised their children in the rural communities and had common friendships. These were everyday women compelled by common beliefs. Some came from deeply religious backgrounds that instilled in them the belief that one must, ”love thy neighbor as they love thyself.” Others originated from schools of political thought, which put them in conflict with the ideals of the Nazis. Still others were children, whose simple adherence to instincts like friendship, loyalty and kindness compelled them to act out against what they thought was wrong.

These women of a common mold chose to stand for their beliefs in a thoroughly oppressive society. Overt, large-scale dissent did not exist in Germany because Nazi oppression was so overwhelming and invasive. A protest through the streets of Germany would have resulted in prison or death of its participants. Dissenters not only had to evade Nazi secret police, the Gestapo and government agents, but hostile spying neighbors and community organizations loyal to the Nazis. Dissenters’s only truly safe outlet was their own thoughts. But as you read these stories you will witness acts of courage and ingenuity that accomplished dissent within this unimaginatively oppressive society.

The significant conclusion of all of this is that regardless of who the person is, regardless of society and circumstances, one can always achieve some sort of dissent against what you think is wrong. In the free world we enjoy many avenues of protest but we can still feel the frustration of feeling that we cannot change the system in which we are living. Imagine the feeling of hopelessness, powerlessness and frustration that these women felt when their entire communities drifted away from them. These women, with no representation, in instances not even a fellow citizen to confide in, conquered powerlessness and became a symbol of the power of an individual.

The women whose stories are written below were common, normal people motivated by common virtues and beliefs who had a momentous, incalculable impact on the world. For each person saved, an individual life of limitless potential, and for every act of dissent, evidence that evil will always be fought against.