In early 1941 in Nazi-occupied France, a German officer stopped a 17-year-old girl and her ailing grandfather. “He fell like a sack of wheat,” said Ms. Riffaud, who died Nov. 6 at her home in Paris at 100. The uprising left hundreds of Resistance fighters and others dead but managed to drive Nazi forces back to garrisons around the city. Ms. Riffaud was known as Rainer, reflecting her admiration for Rainer Maria Rilke, a poet born to a German-speaking family in Prague and who died in 1926. Ms. Riffaud had a five-decade relationship with the North Vietnamese poet and composer and Ho Chi Minh political ally Nguyen Dinh Thi, but they did not marry.

Source: Stuff November 08, 2024 16:37 UTC