Madeleine Pauliac

As the Soviet army pushed west, liberating Poland in 1944-5 and fighting its way to Berlin, there were some 300,000 French nationals, most of them prisoners of war, behind Soviet lines. In January 1945, Dr. Madeleine Pauliac, a medical lieutenant in the French army, was sent to Poland to serve as head of the French Red Cross hospital in Warsaw, which was in ruins. That assignment included responsibility for finding and repatriating all remaining French nationals in Poland, East Prussia and the westernmost areas of the Soviet Union.

The Blue Squadron on the Polish-Czech border (Private collection)

In 2006, just before her death, Madeleine Pauliac’s sister, Anne-Marie Pauliac-Maynial, gave her son Philippe an envelope containing some photos, some letters from her sister, a logbook and some reports. Included in these materials was a brief account of the wartime deed which, according to Maynial’s mother, was her sister’s greatest source of pride. 

Phillippe Maynial, nephew of Madeleine Pauliac​ Letters written to Dr. Pauliac in Poland Mathilde Beaulieu (Lou De Laâge) and Sister Mary Maria (Agata Buzek) In 1945, Dr. Pauliac was approached by a Polish nun, who asked her to provide medical assistance to the nuns at a Benedictine convent. In her mission notes, Pauliac writes: 

"There were 25 of them, 15 were raped and killed by the Russians, the 10 survivors were raped, some 42 times, some 35 or 50 times each … None of this would be anything if five of them were not pregnant. They would come to ask my advice and to speak of abortion in veiled terms."

Phillippe Maynial, nephew of Madeleine Pauliac​

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Letters written to Dr. Pauliac in Poland

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Mathilde Beaulieu (Lou De Laâge) and Sister Mary Maria (Agata Buzek

This episode was adapted into the 2016 feature film Les Innocentes (The Innocents), directed by Anne Fontaine. Madeleine Pauliac, renamed Mathilde Beaulieu and played by the French actress Lou De Laâge, is a French doctor (but not the head of the French hospital in Warsaw, as Pauliac was). Much of the film is about the struggles of different nuns to reconcile their faith with this tragedy as well as the effort by the convent to keep the event from becoming known.

1912 Born in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, France

1916 Pauliac's father, Roger is killed at Verdun; Pauliac and her sister are raised by their grandmother

1939 Completes her thesis on the effects of sulfamide derivatives in the treatment of cerebrospinal meningitis; works as a hospital doctor in Paris

1944 Participates, as a member of the French resistance, in the liberation of Paris

1945 (April) Named head doctor of the French hospital in Warsaw; (July) becomes head of the Blue Squadron

1946 (13 February) Dies of injuries from automobile accident in Sochaczew, near Warsaw

Maynial, Philippe.  Madeleine Pauliac: L’insoumise [Madeleine Pauliac:  Rebel].  Paris: XO Éditions, 2017.