She married Joseph d'Alincourt, a young artillery lieutenant, in the summer of 1939. Joseph, who fought valiantly during the campaign of France, was killed during his captivity in Germany. After his death, Jackqueline moved to Paris where she found a job. Outraged by the sight of a child wearing the yellow star, she never stopped wanting to fight the Nazi occupiers.
In spring 1942, through her friend Claire Chevrillon, she was recruited by Jean Ayral, regional chief of the Office of Air Operations (BOA), a close collaborator of Jean Moulin. Jacqueline, alias Violaine, was responsible for encoding messages sent to the BCRA in London. She became the assistant of Daniel Cordier and was responsible for finding "mail boxes" to collect clandestine mail from all over for France and for ensuring the organization of secret agents from London (residential, industrial blankets, false papers and ration cards, etc.).
Jacqueline was arrested in Paris by the Gestapo on 24 September 1943, She suffered violent interrogations for five days and then held incommunicado in Fresnes prison for six months. In April 1944, after a stay in Romainville, she was deported to Ravensbrück. There she found Geneviève de Gaulle, the niece of the leader of Free France, and became friends with Germaine Tillion, Anise Postel-Vinay and Margarete Buber-Neumann.
Saved by the Swedish Red Cross, she left Ravensbrück in April 1945, bringing with her the secretly written manuscript of Germain Tillion's operetta's The Verfügbar in the Underworld.
On her return from exile, she married Pierre Pery, a resistant who had been deported to Buchenwald. Jacqueline died on 21 April 2009
Click HERE to read
Surviving Ravensbruck
"Forgive, Don't Forget"
A memoir by Jacqueline Pery d'Alincourt
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