Marguerite Gonnet (13 October 1898 - 27 May 1996) was a member of the
French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. She was from the city of
Grenoble
lat, Gratianopolis
, commune status = Prefecture and commune
, image = Panorama grenoble.png
, image size =
, caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...
in southeastern France. At age forty-four, married with nine children, she joined the resistance group Libération-sud. She became the head of the resistance cell in the department of
Isère
Isère ( , ; frp, Isera; oc, Isèra, ) is a landlocked department in the southeastern French region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Named after the river Isère, it had a population of 1,271,166 in 2019.Marie Reynoad.
In April 1942, she was arrested by the Nazis for carrying illegal newspapers. A German military prosecutor asked Gonnet why she had taken up arms against France's occupiers, to which she said, "Quite simply, Colonel, because the men had dropped them". This quote was used by American author Sarah Rose as the epigraph of her 2019 book ''D-Day Girls''. Gonnet was sentenced to two years in prison, and her leadership role in the resistance was taken up by Jean Weber.
She died in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
on 27 May 1996 at the age of 97. There is a street in Grenoble named after her. In 2020, author Olivier Vallade published a book about Gonnet ''Marguerite Gonnet: Déterminée à Sortir de l’ombre'' (English: Marguerite Gonnet: Determined to Emerge from the Shadows).