Claude Cahun (1894-1954)

Lucy Schwob is the name of a French woman born into an avante garde family in 1894. She is more famous as Claude Cahun, an artist, but she is not well known and from the photographs of her art I cannot evaluate her artistic talent. But the stories I have read about her activity during World War II remind me about the amazing possibilities of human heroism. She and the Jewish woman who was her lover refused to leave their home on the Channel Islands as a German invasion was imminent. For four years they conducted, they being two women by themselves, an anti German campaign and were undetected. They distributed anti Nazi leaflets when to be found out meant certain deportation to concentration camps if not execution. Two middle aged women with no family or other support near by. An amazing story I discovered from a review of a new book written by Louise Downie and discussed by Terry Castle in the London Review of Books.