Born: 19 January 1906, France
Died: 13 April 1945
Country most active: France
Also known as: Emma, Françoise, Madame Royale, Mademoiselle Flaubert, Madame Bertrand
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
As Margaret L. Rossiter notes in her study, Women in the Resistance, some women that have gained attention for their heroic acts managed to preform them while nonchalantly preforming their day jobs. Simone Michel Lévy used her job in the Postal, Telegraph, and Telephone Service (PTT) to obtain intelligence about the Germans that she managed to send to London under the code name of Emma. These women all took enormous risks and many of them were eventually caught and arrested by the German police. Simone herself was captured and deported to Ravensbrück where she continued to sabotage the Germans by organizing work stoppages of her inmates. The Germans sentenced her to death and she was hanged in April of 1945. She was later awarded the Cross of the Liberation and portrayed on a postage stamp that honored Resistants (Women in the Resistance, p.115).