Agnès Humbert (1894–1963)

Agnès Humbert was the daughter of a French-English couple: her father was a French senator and her mother an English writer. In 1916, she married Georges Hanna Sabbagh, an Egyptian artist, with whom she had two sons; the couple divorced in 1934. Agnès studied art history at the Sorbonne and at the Louvre school. Her first book, on the painter Jacques-Louis David, was published in 1936. She worked as an at historian at the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires and did radio commentary on art. After the Germans captured Paris in 1940, Agnès Humbert was stirred to action by an appeal by General de Gaulle on the BBC's Radio France encouraging the French people to resist their occupiers. With colleagues and friends such as Boris Vildé, Jean Cassou, and Yvonne Oddon, she formed the Groupe du Musée de l'Homme. In a few months the group had built a highly effective underground network. They created the clandestine newspaper Résistance and obtained information for the Allies. In 1941, Humbert and other members of the museum group were betrayed to the Gestapo and sentenced to death. However, she and other women were instead sent to perform slave labor in camps and factories around Germany. She survived four years under horrifying conditions and was liberated by the U.S. Army in June 1945. Agnès Humbert set up soup kitchens for refugees and helped to start the de-Nazification process. After the war, she wrote more books on art history. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre with silver gilt palm for heroism in 1946. She published her wartime diary under the title Notre Guerre in 1946; it was reissued and translated into English under the title Résistance (2008).