Olga Bancic
Olga Bancic (Romanian:
Biography
Bancic was born to a
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Bancic gave birth to Dolores, her daughter with Alexandru Jar,
Arrested by the Gestapo on 6 November 1943, she was subject to torture, but refused to give information about her comrades.[1] After the arrest of the Manouchian Group, the Gestapo published a series of propaganda posters, named l'Affiche Rouge, which depicted its members, Bancic included, as "terrorists".
On 21 February 1944, she, Manouchian, and 21 others were sentenced to death—all male defendants were executed later that day at Fort Mont-Valérien; since a French law prohibited women from being executed by firing squad, the typical means of disposing of members of the resistance,[2] Bancic, the only female in the Group, was deported to Stuttgart and decapitated[1][2][4] in the local prison's courtyard at 6 AM on her 32nd birthday and was buried the same day.[6] During her transportation to the place of execution, she composed a letter to her daughter Dolores, who was known under the name Dolores Jacob, on a piece of paper which she threw out a window.[4]
Legacy
Bancic's widower, Alexandru Jar, returned to Romania at the end of the war, and established a career under the new
Several streets were named in Bancic's honor, and small monuments were erected in her memory, along with a wall plaque in the PCF plot at
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Golda (Olga) Bancic". Holocaust Encyclopedia. US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 21 January 2022.
- ^ a b c (in French) "Olga Bancic", at Souviens-toi des déportes
- ^ "Romanians of the French Resistance". Research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 5 June 2022.
- ^ a b c "Last letters of The Manouchian Group May, 1944. Olga Bancic" at the Marxists Internet Archive (translated by Mitch Abidor)
- Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990, p. 104
- ^ "Les résistants guillotinés |" (in French). Retrieved 2 June 2019.
- ISBN 0-52-023747-1), p.185-187
- ^ (in Romanian) Bedros Horasangian, "Caragiale, go home!"[permanent dead link], in Ziua, June 29, 2005
- ISBN 978-0-525-43372-9.