At 20, she forged documents to save Jewish refugees. The Gestapo tortured her under Klaus Barbie. She survived concentration camps eating insects and bark. Last year, she died at 100 with full military honors.
Her name was Josette Molland, and her story is one of the most extraordinary acts of courage from World War II. The Art Student Who Became a Forger: In 1943, Josette Molland was 20 years old, studying art in Lyon, France, and designing intricate patterns for silk weavers. She had an artist's eye for detail, a steady hand, and precision skills.
France was under Nazi occupation. The Vichy government collaborated with the Germans. Jewish families were being rounded up for deportation. Allied airmen shot down over France faced capture. Resistance fighters needed to move in secret.
All of them needed one thing: false identity papers. Josette joined the French Resistance and put her artistic skills to work in the most dangerous way possible: forgery.
She specialized in creating rubber stamps—official-looking Nazi and Vichy government stamps that made false papers appear authentic. She forged identity documents, travel permits, ration cards. Her work was meticulous. If the forgery was detected, the person carrying it would be arrested, tortured, killed. The forger would face the same fate. Josette worked for the Dutch-Paris network—one of the most successful resistance escape lines, which smuggled over 1,000 Jewish refugees and Allied personnel from the Netherlands through France to safety in Spain and Switzerland.
For months, Josette's forgeries helped people escape death. Every stamp she carved, every document she created, was a life potentially saved. But in occupied France, the Gestapo was hunting resistance members relentlessly.
Capture by the Butcher of Lyon:
On March 18, 1944, the Gestapo arrested Josette Molland in Lyon. She was taken to Gestapo headquarters at the Hôtel Terminus—the base of Klaus Barbie, the Nazi SS officer known as the "Butcher of Lyon."Barbie was notorious for his cruelty. He personally tortured resistance fighters, trying to break them into revealing network contacts.
Under his command, countless resistance members were beaten, electrocuted, drowned, and killed. Josette, age 20, was interrogated and tortured. They wanted names. They wanted to know who else was in the network.
Who forged the documents?
Who helped refugees escape?
Where were the safe houses? Josette refused to talk.
Despite the torture, despite being a young woman facing men trained in brutality, she gave them nothing. She protected the network. She protected the people she'd helped save.
After weeks of torture, she was deported. Ravensbrück - The Women's Camp: Josette was sent to Ravensbrück, the main Nazi concentration camp for women in northern Germany.
Over 130,000 women were imprisoned there during the war. Approximately 50,000 were killed—by execution, medical experiments, starvation, disease, or being worked to death.French Resistance women were common prisoners.
They were marked as political prisoners, subjected to brutal treatment, and often targeted for the harshest punishments. Josette endured beatings, starvation rations, disease, and the constant threat of death. But Ravens brück was only the beginning.
Holleischen - The Ammunition Factory: Josette was transferred to Holleischen (Holýšov), a forced-labor camp in Czechoslovakia, part of the Flossenbürg concentration camp system.
At Holleischen, prisoners worked 12+ hour days in an ammunition factory, manufacturing weapons for the Nazi war machine. The work was exhausting, dangerous, and unrelenting.
Rations were barely enough to sustain life—watery soup, crusts of bread, almost no protein. Prisoners were beaten for working too slowly. Many collapsed from exhaustion or starvation. Josette's weight dropped to approximately 60 pounds. Her body was skeletal. Every day, she watched fellow prisoners die.But Josette Molland refused to give up.
She survived on whatever she could find—insects, tree bark, scraps scavenged from anywhere. She organized a prisoner rebellion, attempting to resist even in the camp. She tried to escape multiple times, risking execution.
She later wrote: "What I lived in the camps, I can't even describe it. Unimaginable. If you haven't lived it, you can't understand. Every day we thought would be our last."But every morning, she was still alive.
Liberation: On May 5, 1945, U.S. forces liberated Holleischen. Josette Molland, age 21, had survived. Barely.
She weighed under 30 kilograms (66 pounds). Her body was ravaged by starvation, beatings, and disease. Many prisoners died in the days after liberation—their bodies too damaged to recover even with food and medical care. Josette survived.She returned to Lyon and reunited with her mother. Slowly, over months, she regained her strength.
A Life of Testimony:After the war, Josette married and became Josette Molland-Ilinsky. She raised a family and tried to rebuild a normal life.
Like many Holocaust and concentration camp survivors, she initially spoke little about her experiences. The trauma was too immense. The memories too painful.But as years passed and as Holocaust denial began to emerge, Josette understood the importance of testimony.
She had witnessed unimaginable evil. She had survived. And she had a responsibility to tell the truth. For over six decades, Josette spoke at schools, museums, and memorial events. She shared her story with thousands of students, ensuring that the next generation would know what happened. She was among approximately 40 remaining recipients (out of 65,000 originally awarded) of the French Resistance medal—one of the last living witnesses to the heroism and horror of that era.
In 2016, at age 92, she published her autobiography: "Soif de Vivre" (Thirst for Life).The title said everything. Despite torture, despite camps, despite starvation and brutality, Josette Molland had an unquenchable thirst for life. She refused to let the Nazis take that from her.
February 17, 2024:Last year, Josette Molland-Ilinsky died at age 100 in a nursing home in Nice, France.She had lived a full century—eight decades beyond the camps that were meant to kill her. She had raised a family, told her story to generations of students, and ensured that the truth of the Holocaust and the Resistance would not be forgotten.
Her funeral was held with full military honors—a tribute befitting a war hero.
Christian Estrosi, the Mayor of Nice, led the ceremonies. A military honor guard stood at attention. The French flag draped her coffin. And as her casket was carried, mourners sang:
"La Marseillaise" - the French national anthem
"Chant des Partisans" - the anthem of the French Resistance, the song of those who fought in secret, risking everything for freedom
It was a fitting tribute. Josette Molland had been a partisan. She had forged documents at age 20 to save lives. She had endured torture and refused to break. She had survived concentration camps. And she had spent the rest of her long life ensuring the world remembered.
With Josette's death, the world lost one of its last direct links to the French Resistance and the Holocaust. Each survivor who passes takes with them irreplaceable testimony—not just facts from books, but lived experience, the truth told by those who were there.
Josette's story reminds us: Courage comes in many forms - A 20-year-old art student with a forger's skill saved lives.
Evil must be resisted - Even when resistance means torture and death
The human spirit is unbreakable - Even concentration camps couldn't destroy her thirst for life Testimony matters - She spent 60+ years ensuring we would never forget
She was 20 when she joined the Resistance. She was 21 when the camps were liberated. She lived to be 100, and spent every year after the war honoring those who didn't survive by telling the truth."Soif de Vivre" - Thirst for Life. That was Josette Molland. Artist. Forger. Resistance fighter. Concentration camp survivor. Witness. Teacher. Hero.
She forged documents to save Jews and Allied airmen. She was tortured by Klaus Barbie's Gestapo. She survived Ravensbrück and Holleischen by eating insects and bark. She refused to die when every circumstance said she should.And she lived to 100, ensuring that generations would know what happened and why it must never happen again.
France buried one of its last Resistance heroes with full military honours, singing the songs of freedom she'd fought for eight decades ago.
Rest in peace, Josette Molland-Ilinsky. Your thirst for life inspired us all.
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