Nils Klawitter : la petite main de la Résistance
A Franco-German meeting focusing on resistance during the Second World War. The starting point is the story of Melanie Berger, recorded by Nils Klawitter in his novel.
About this event
Literature | How Melanie Berger defied the Nazis
The heroic and little-known story of a young resistance fighter during the Second World War. In 1934, at the age of twelve, Melanie Berger joined the resistance against fascism in Austria. In 2026, at the age of 104, in France, where she now lives, she continues to call on us to fight. This book tells her extraordinary story, marked by struggle and persecution, imprisonment and solidarity, love and freedom. Her fate, both heroic and little-known, is that of a woman who rebelled.
Melanie Berger was twelve when she joined the barricade fighters during the February 1934 uprising in Vienna. At thirteen, she moved through the city at night, putting up posters against the Nazis. At sixteen, when Hitler announced the annexation of her country to the Third Reich, she had no choice but to flee. From Austria to France via Belgium, her journey would be that of an underground fighter. Eventually arrested in 1942 for belonging to a resistance group, she was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In the prisons of Montauban, Toulouse and then Marseille, she endured beatings, isolation and fear. She returned to clandestine activity after a daring escape in 1943 and remained a messenger for the Resistance until the end of the war. La Petite Main de la Résistance is the story of this exceptional life.
Moderator: Joachim Umlauf (Litteralléa)
