Living A Double Life

When the war broke out in September 1939, Raymond and Lucie and plans to move to America and get married, but once France was dominated by Nazi Germany and Vichy France, they decided not to abandon their friends and family in their homeland, so they stayed and got married in France. Lucie worked in a Lycee in Lyon teaching history to secondary students, discretely trying to dissuade her pupils from the Vichy government of Michael Petain.

“My preparation consists of just two short paragraphs devoted to soil conditions and climate, and sneakily develops at length what fits with present reality-the shortage of manpower resulting from more than a million being held as prisoners of war”(Aubrac 23)

“During [1939-1943] we led two sharply distinct lives… we did everything possible to avoid the collision of our two lives...Our home was for us a refuge of relaxation, of equilibrium. In our clandestine world we were a rarity-a couple, a family capable of sheltering solitary furtive passerby. We were just Raymond and Lucie Samuel, completely aboveboard.”(Aubrac 4)

Lucie and her husband helped organize the French resistance movement, worked with forgers to produce fake documents, distributing resistance newspapers and keeping in communication with the Gallist central government, which was headed by Charles de Gaulle, the top resistant to Nazi Germany and the Vichy. Lucie even succeeded in getting her husband and four other members of the resistance out of jail.