Violette Lecoq

Violette Lecoq (1912 to 2003) was a French nurse, illustrator and member of the resistance during the Second World War. At the outbreak of the war she worked as a nurse with the Red Cross and was affiliated with the French resistance. She was arrested in 1942, held for a year in isolation and in 1943 taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a Nacht und Nebel prisoner, where she worked as a nurse in block ten, the block for tuberculous and mentally ill prisoners. From there she managed to obtain pencil and paper and drew scenes of camp life. Her drawings were used as evidence at the first Ravensbrück Trials in Hamburg in 1946, at which she also testified, and were published in 1948 as Ravensbrück, 36 dessins à la plume. She received the French Resistance medal and the Croix de guerre and died in Paris.