Marcelle Henry

Marcelle Marguerite Henry (7 September 1895 – 24 April 1945) was a French civil servant and a member of the French Resistance during the Second World War. Marcelle Henry was born at Angers. Her father was the local Inspector of Public Works who died before the First World War. She went to school in Limoges, before later attending the Lycée Victor-Duruy collage in Paris, where she obtained her baccalauréat. During the First World War, she taught at a boys' school in Châtillon-sur-Seine and later at Langres. In 1919, Marcelle Henry went to work at the Ministry of Labour, as her father had done before her. Her mother died in 1925, leaving Marcelle to look after her brother Victor, who was chronically ill and unable to work. By 1931 she was deputy head of a department, and in 1937 she was put in charge of the office that dealt with the health and safety of workers, still within the Ministry of Labour. In June 1940, she began organising resistance to the German occupation from within her workplace. At her home in Athis-Mons, she produced and stored pamphlets for distribution to workers; she also sheltered refugees.