Madeleine Riffaud - the heroine of Paris liberation and poet-journalist

Life and liberty are nature-endowed and dear to all sentient beings. However, when asked to choose between the two, the few who choose liberty know that the choice is not between one and the other but between both and neither. Marie-Madeleine Riffaud, resistance fighter, war reporter, and poet was among those few.

- SATISH KUMAR SHARMA

Her vast and richly meaningful life can fill many volumes, but here one can touch only its broad contours.

She was 19 when she escaped execution by a German firing squad narrowly. She went on to witness one hundred springs, but the trauma of her torture in the Gestapo prison never let her sleep before 5 AM.

Her crime? She was a modern-day Joan of Arc. In May 1940, Hitler's invasion of France had set off an exodus of people from North to South. Riffaud was there with her grandfather when German soldiers misbehaved with her and kicked her in the back. She fell down. That was her Petermaritzburg station moment. Like Gandhi, she resolved to fight oppression. However, unlike the Mahatma, she would do it with a gun until she felt strong enough to wield the pen.