In February 2024, Missak MANOUCHIAN and his companions enter the Panthéon. But one figure is missing from the ceremonies accompanying this event. Olga BANCIC, a full-fledged member of the Manouchian group, was guillotined in Stuttgart by the Nazis on May 10, 1944. Forgotten in the commemorations, she is reborn today thanks to the work of Françoise RUDISILE, a French jurist based in Stuttgart. Interview.
Having lived in Germany for over fifty years, it was through a series of coincidences that Françoise RUDISILE discovers the existence of Olga BANCIC, a figure too discreet in the Resistance. In 2022, in Stuttgart, she accompanies a delegation of descendants of resistance railway workers from Dijon to pay homage to their parents. The French jurist has no idea that a simple commemoration will shake her perception of history… and ours too!
MANOUCHIAN at the Panthéon / Olga BANCIC in Stuttgart
In front of the monument dedicated to the victims of Nazism, her gaze falls on a stele bearing a name that intrigues her: Golda BANCIC. “There, a journalist tells me: ‘You know, she was sentenced in France.’ I was struck like lightning. The beginnings of my historical research date back to that day,” she confides.
But one event gives new impetus to her investigation. In 2023, when President MACRON announces the entry into the Panthéon of Missak MANOUCHIAN and his Resistance companions, Françoise RUDISILE decides to mobilize the consuls of France, Armenia, and Moldova, as well as several political bodies. Her goal: to honor the memory in Stuttgart of Olga BANCIC, unjustly kept in the shadows.
Armenak Arpen (“Missak”) MANOUCHIAN (c) police photo from 18.11.1943.
Golda (“Olga”) BANCIC, Romanian Resistance Fighter Exiled to Paris in 1938…
Born in 1912 in Bessarabia—today Moldova—she who is still called Golda joins the communist ranks very early on. Her militant activities earn her prison in Romania. Fleeing repression, she reaches France in 1938 with her daughter and her husband, the poet and writer Jacob SALOMON, who later takes the name Alexandre JAR.
In Paris, Golda changes her name to “Olga.” Alexandre JAR, for his part, joins the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans during the Occupation. Their respective commitments often keep them apart. Olga takes care of their daughter, Dolores, and attends classes at the Sorbonne. She also does everything to support the family’s needs through small jobs.
… Joins the FTP-MOI as Early as 1941
As early as 1941, Olga BANCIC joins the Resistance in turn within the FTP-MOI. Within this group, no one knows each other by their real name. Olga goes by “Pierrette.” Those who knew her remember a woman with a sharp and alert mind. For Françoise RUDISILE, “She was very intelligent, although she cannot be called an intellectual.”
The MANOUCHIAN group, made up mainly of foreign antifascists, Jews, and communists, carries out sabotage and resistance actions in clandestinity. Olga plays an essential role there: it is assumed that she handled the transport of weapons, while ensuring liaison between the cells.
Her presence reminds us that the Resistance was also carried by courageous women, often remaining invisible in historical accounts. However, Françoise RUDISILE does not wish to turn Olga BANCIC into an icon or a mythologized figure. It is above all about doing justice to a righteous and committed woman in a collective struggle, and not erecting a solitary heroine. Their political and moral struggle was unequivocal. As MANOUCHIAN used to say, “When you shoot, you don’t shoot at a German, you shoot at a Nazi.”
The MANOUCHIAN Group, the Red Poster, and the Hunt
In Dijon, as early as December 1940, resistance railway workers from the Perrigny depot, CGT unionists, form a sabotage group under the direction of Maurice THURINGER. Their risky actions target railway infrastructure. Some of them pay the ultimate price. They are arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death.
These parallel struggles testify to the determination of the resisters in the face of relentless repression. On the opposing side, the Night and Fog decree, secretly signed by Adolf HITLER on December 7, 1941, accelerates arrests and executions. This is how the Gestapo monitors the MANOUCHIAN group for long months before acting. In two days, it proceeds to arrest sixty of its members.
The Nazis then plaster all over Paris their famous Red Poster showing the faces of the resisters. The slogans aim to portray them as foreign criminals and terrorists. But as Léo Ferré would later recall, “the red poster [continued] to bloom in our memories.”
In February 1944, the members of the MANOUCHIAN group are sentenced to death. As for Olga BANCIC, she is arrested and transferred to Fresnes prison before being deported to Germany.
The famous Red Poster from the German propaganda services; on the right: the back of the tract distributed by the Occupier about the Manouchian Group, 1944. © Wikipedia.
Clemens RÜTHER, German Witness to the Mont-Valérien Execution
A rare and poignant testimony, discovered in 1985, comes from Clemens RÜTHER, a German non-commissioned officer who witnessed the execution. On February 21, 1944, 22 members of the FTP-MOI group, including Missak MANOUCHIAN, are shot at Mont-Valérien.
RÜTHER describes with chilling precision the methodical killing: “They were all shot, four at a time, by a commando of German armed forces. They were tied to posts and had their eyes blindfolded. […] Only one man of nearly 50 years old showed any sign of life […], an officer then gave him the coup de grâce.”
Another notable witness to this dark episode is Abbé STOCK, a German military chaplain. Present throughout the fateful journey, he witnesses the arrests, trials, and executions. According to testimonies, the abbé brought a human presence in a context of inhumanity. He arrived with his missal and began his prayers, interspersed with news about the prisoners’ families. “Hail Mary, I saw your family yesterday, full of grace, the children are doing well,” he would say, creating a fragile link between the detainees and their loved ones.
Executions of Georges Cloarec, Rino Della Negra, Cesar Lucarini, and Antonio Salvadori, Francs-Tireurs et Partisans resistance fighters from the immigrant labor force (FTP-MOI) of the “Manouchian Group.” Mont-Valérien (Hauts-de-Seine), February 21, 1944. © Clemens Rüther/ ECPAD/Defense. Association Les Amis de Franz Stock – Franz Stock Komitee.
Olga BANCIC Writes a Last Letter to Her Daughter
As for Olga BANCIC, she is sent to Stuttgart prison, where she arrives in early May 1944. In the meantime, she manages to write a letter to her daughter Dolores, which she probably slips through a window during her transfer. In this final farewell message, she uses the word “love” twelve times.
From the very first words, the intensity of her letter strikes us: “The last wish of a mother who will live another twelve hours.” This letter will only reach her husband and daughter, who have returned to live in Romania, after the war.
“Women resisters were no longer to be executed in France. The firing squad was reserved for men!” specifies Françoise RUDISILE. On May 10, 1944, Olga BANCIC is thus guillotined. Her body is sent to the anatomy department of the University of Tübingen or Heidelberg, from where it disappears without a trace.
Restoration of Olga BANCIC’s Memory
It was not until 1990 that a stele in her memory was installed at Mont-Valérien, alongside those of the MANOUCHIAN group. Today, in Stuttgart, the memory of the victims of Nazism is embodied in several places. The stele at the Landgericht is one, the Silber Hotel—former Gestapo headquarters, transformed into a memorial site in 2010—is another.
“Every year, a small bouquet is placed on the stele at the Landgericht Stuttgart,” confides Françoise RUDISILE. If these commemorations make Olga BANCIC an example of courage, they also remind us that nothing is ever acquired. The investigator continues her quest by cross-referencing sources. For she wishes to be able to answer the lingering doubts. “What is the exact date of her transfer? What happened to her daughter Dolores? Write a book to reconstruct her fragmented memory?”
Also read: Justice Instrumentalized by the Nazis: The End of the Rule of Law in Germany from 1933 (Sabrina MÜLLER, Haus der Geschichte, Stuttgart).
Olga BANCIC with her family, with Alexandre JAR and their daughter, Dolores. (c) Romanian National Archives.
Nazi Justice and the Ambiguous Role of Jurists: The Post-War Persilschein
Françoise RUDISILE highlights the paradoxical role of certain judges and Germans during the Second World War. “We must ask the question of authority. Every system must be subject to criticism. The judges of the time condemned, but at the same time signed a request for clemency out of conscience. Even if this request never succeeded, they could thus cleanse their conscience at little cost.” The clemency procedure, rigorously controlled, was often blocked at the highest level.
After the war, jurists were subjected to the denazification process. Many obtained an official document. It was issued by the Allies or local authorities, attesting that they had not been active Nazis or that they posed no political danger. Ironically, it was called Persilschein—”Persil certificate”—because it “whitened” its holder’s reputation “whiter than white.” Often, this certificate was obtained through favorable testimony from a neighbor.
Duty of Memory: A Contemporary Urgency
Olga BANCIC embodies a precious link between past and present. Her struggle goes beyond individual memory. And joins the burning issues of our time.
For Françoise RUDISILE, commitment is rooted in the present. “It’s no longer about the past, but about what’s happening today. Since 2015, I have been a volunteer in an association for asylum seekers. The fight against the resurgence of the far right in Europe, attacks on living memories, and challenges to the right of asylum in Germany are the source of my current motivation.”
In 2024, by choosing to bring Missak MANOUCHIAN and his companions into the Panthéon, Emmanuel MACRON recognizes the decisive role of foreign resisters in French history. This highly symbolic gesture resonates with current debates on immigration. These men and women from elsewhere risked—and often gave—their lives to defend a country that was not their birth country. But which they had chosen as their adopted homeland.
Olga BANCIC: Posthumous Recognition
Certainly, Olga BANCIC did not receive the posthumous recognition she deserved. Yet, as a resistance fighter, mother, woman, and universal symbol of courage, she becomes a mirror held up to our era. We do not know where she rests. Her memory, however, remains alive and awakens our consciences. She exhorts us to resist the extremist ideologies that are gaining ground today, despite the terrible examples of the past.
Her last words, addressed to her daughter, touch our souls deeply. They remind us of the fate of women and children who experience the horror of barbarity, even today. We can imagine their words slipping from the lips of survivors, traveling with the wind over ravaged lands. To awaken our consciences:
“I die with a clear conscience, and with all the conviction that tomorrow you will have a happier life and future…” Olga B