In a residential district of Tours-Nordwhere it builds all the way, a new street no way out has just been created, in the Sainte-Radegonde district. And it already has a name: Helena Fournierwhose plaque was unveiled this Saturday, December 4 by the town hall, under the moved eyes of her granddaughter and her great-granddaughter, who bears the same first name as her.
Born in Cussay in 1904, Héléna Fournier was part of these women who sided with the resistance fighters during the Second World War. Under the German occupation, she joined the Libé-Nord network in Tours, for which she relayed messages, raised funds and housed escaped prisoners.
Deported among the convoy of 31,000
In October 1942, she was denounced by residents. Arrested by the police, she was taken to Romainville then to Compiègne, before being deported to Auschwitz on January 23, 1943, among the so-called “31,000” convoy. Transferred to Ravensbrück, she came out alive from the hell of the camps in 1945 and returns to Touraine to run a grocery store there with her husband.
It is this course which is worth to him today to be sharpened with a street. “Hearing this story and seeing his name given to a street, it makes me even prouder to bear his first name”says Héléna Toulousy-Michel, her great-granddaughter, who came with her mother from the United States, where they live, for the inauguration of rue Héléna Fournier.
A book left to his family
Her past, Héléna Fournier did not immediately tell her family. “I was very attached to her, but she never told me about her story.remembers Carole Toulousy-Michel, his granddaughter. I asked about the tattoo she had on her arm, the number 31.793, but she just told me it was the work of naughty Germans. That’s all I was entitled to. Because it was the moment of the reconstruction of France, of the post-war period. It was necessary to speak only of renewal, of beauty. And not horror.”
Before dying in Rochecorbon, in 1994, Héléna Fournier had left her family a memoir on her life in the camps. Carole Toulousy-Michel only read it in the summer of 2021. “Of course, I already knew its story and I thought I understood it. But in reality, what did I know of Auschwitz? Of the horror of the camps? I had to unearth this 250-page book to really know I spent two months reading it all and felt like I was going through what she had been through, which was the abomination.And still, I don’t even know if there is one word to describe it. Today, I am relieved and happy to see the tribute paid to him.”