Camille Senon, a French feminist and union activist who survived the Nazi massacre in her village of Oradour-sur-Glane, has died at the age of 100. The mayor’s office confirmed her death on Thursday.
Senon was a young woman on June 10, 1944, when Nazi SS troops invaded Oradour and killed 642 villagers, including her entire family. She escaped only because she had been working in Limoges that day.
“I was working in Limoges, but I would return to Oradour at the weekend. That day I took the tramway as usual, and we quickly saw the black smoke in the distance,” Senon told AFP in 2017.
She said the SS troops kept her and others for several hours, making them fear they would also be killed.
“What I saw next is hard to speak of. There was not a soul left alive,” she recalled. Most of the victims were women and children.
Related Stories:
- Two Killed, Three Injured in Manchester Synagogue Attack
- Suspected Fake Lawyer Arrested in Delta Court
After the war, Senon became active in the Communist Party and joined the CGT trade union, where she rose through the male-dominated ranks to lead one of its key women’s sections in Paris. She described herself as an “eternal rebel” and spent her life fighting for women’s rights.
“When I started working, you have to imagine… women still had to ask their boss for permission to get married! Misogyny and everyday sexism were everywhere, including in trade unions,” she once said.
Even in her later years, Senon remained politically active. In 2014, she ran for local office in Limoges and joined protests against controversial comedian Dieudonne.
In 2016, she refused France’s National Order of Merit, saying she did not want to “renounce my entire life of activism for greater justice and solidarity, freedom, fraternity and peace.”
Speaking on her 100th birthday in June, she encouraged young people to hold on to their values.
“It’s important to remind young people not to compromise their values and to remain optimistic, whatever the circumstances. Because even if the world we are facing is worrying, life has shown me that it is never time to despair,” she said.