She was only twenty when she began forging documents to save Jewish refugees. Caught and subjected to torture by Klaus Barbie’s Gestapo, she ultimately survived the horrors of the concentration camps by eating insects and tree bark.
This is the true story of Josette Molland, a French hero who just died a few weeks ago at the age of 100. She was honored like a soldier because of the unbelievable bravery she showed during World War II.
Back in 1943, when Josette was just 20 years old, France was under Nazi control. Josette was studying art, learning how to draw perfect patterns. She had a sharp eye and steady hands.
She decided to use her skills for the good guys—the French Resistance. They were secretly fighting the Nazis.
What did they need most? Fake ID papers.
Josette became a forger. She carved special rubber stamps that looked exactly like the official Nazi stamps. When she put her fake stamps on a document, it looked real.
She forged ID cards, travel permits, and food ration cards. Her fake papers helped over 1,000 people—Jewish families and Allied pilots—escape the Nazis to safe countries like Spain and Switzerland.
It was the most dangerous job in the world. If the Nazis caught someone with her fake papers, that person would be killed. If they caught her, she would be killed immediately.
In March 1944, the Nazis finally caught Josette.
She was taken to the headquarters of Klaus Barbie, the horrible Nazi officer nicknamed the “Butcher of Lyon.”
Josette was tortured. The Nazis wanted her to name her friends in the Resistance. They wanted to know where the safe houses were.
But Josette was stronger than the pain. She was only 20, but she stayed silent. She refused to give them any names. She protected everyone she had worked with and everyone she had helped save.
Because she wouldn’t talk, the Nazis sent her to concentration camps.
First, she went to Ravensbrück, a terrible camp for women. Then she was sent to Holleischen, where she was forced to work 12 hours a day making weapons for the German army.
The food was almost nothing—just thin soup and a bit of bread. Josette became skin and bones, weighing only about 60 pounds. She watched people die around her every day.
But Josette refused to die.
To stay alive, she ate whatever she could find—insects and tree bark.
She even tried to escape!
She later said: “What I lived in the camps, I can’t even describe it… Every day we thought would be our last.”
On May 5, 1945, American soldiers finally freed her camp. Josette, at 21, was barely alive, but she had made it.
After the war, she slowly got better, married, and had a family.
For a long time, the memories were too painful to share.
But as she got older, she realized she had to tell the world what happened.
For over 60 years, Josette traveled to schools and museums to share her story. She made sure that the new generations would never forget the truth about the war.
In 2016, she wrote a book called “Soif de Vivre”, which means “Thirst for Life.”
A few weeks ago, Josette Molland-Ilinsky died peacefully at 100 years old. She had lived a whole century—80 years longer than the Nazis wanted her to live.
At her funeral, the government gave her full military honors. Her coffin was covered with the French flag, and the people sang the national song and the anthem of the Resistance.
The life we know, the freedom we cherish, is a gift won by the unwavering, unbreaking, and deeply compassionate spirit of heroes like her.
At twenty, this young woman stood against the tide of darkness, passionately forging documents to save Jewish refugees from the abyss.
Even when she was captured and subjected to the unimaginable brutality of torture by Klaus Barbie’s Gestapo, her fortitude never yielded.
She stared down death in the concentration camps, surviving on nothing but insects and bark, proving that humanity’s deepest compassion is the ultimate force against tyranny!
Even the greatest evil can’t break the human spirit.
<We Are Human Angels >
Authors
Awakening the Human Spirit
We are the authors of ‘We Are Human Angels,’ the book that has spread a new vision of the human experience and has been spontaneously translated into 14 languages by readers.
We hope our writing sparks something in you!
