Carme Gardell García, “Carme Bartolí” (1891-1945)

María del Carmen Gardell García was born on 6 May 6 1891 in Setcases (Girona). She was the daughter of Carola García and Jaume Gardell. She married Joan Bartolí, with whom she would end up having four children: Jaume, Sabina, Josep and Hermínia. Due to the family’s economic difficulties she had to emigrate to Valmanya (France), a town with a strong mining sector.

With the outbreak of World War II, she and her daughter Sabina Bartolí, who was in her early twenties, began to support different local resistance movements against the Nazi occupation. The mountainous environment around the house where they lived –the Cabanats farmhouse– was especially convenient for the Maquis and there they were able to shelter, feed or cure guerrillas when necessary. The owner of the farmhouse was the military man and politician Abdon Robert Casso, who lived in Paris. In September 1940, he joined the French resistance. In addition, his daughter Sabina was married to Jovino González García “Cubino” who not only was a good friend but also the right-hand man of René Horte, the town’s teacher and communist militant. In 1941, Abdon Casso and Horte created the Sainte Jeanne evasion network, which helped evade Belgian citizens who wanted to cross to Spain. So it is of no surprise that he was linked to local resistance movements such as Combat, Franc-tireur and Libératión Sud.[1] In the words of his daughter Sabina, “People say that we were in the Resistance […] Our arrest, together with that of the owner of the house in which we lived, a Frenchman, a French gentleman, was motivated by an attitude that seemed so natural to my mother and me that it didn’t even occur to us that we were taking part and collaborating with the French Resistance against the Nazi occupier.”

The two women were taken to the Amelie-les-Bains prison where they were separated from their husbands. From there, they went through different French prisons such as Arles, Perpignan and Compiègne, and were subjected to harsh interrogations. On 31 January 1944, they were sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, along with Louise Horte, wife of the French teacher, in one of the most massive transports of Catalan resisters. Among them were also Neus Català and Alfonsina Bueno. The conditions on the train were inhumane as there were no windows. There were more than eighty people in each wagon and no toilets, and they only ate once in almost four days. Finally, on 3 February 1944, they arrived in Ravensbrück and were registered under their married names. Carme Bartolí was registered with number 27,046 and Sabine González with number 27,156.

Shortly after, due to the intense resisting activity of the town, an exemplary punishment was imposed by the occupation forces. On 2 August 1944, the event known as the Valmanya massacre took place. The entire town suffered Nazi revenge and was completely destroyed. The inhabitants who could not flee were killed or deported.

Meanwhile, the harsh conditions of the camp –hunger, all sorts of abuse, and the extreme cold– undermined the prisoners’ health. Carmen would end up dying of typhus on 15 April, 1945, only fifteen days after the liberation of the camp by the Red Army. In Montserrat Roig harsh words: “No one over 40 years old could survive deportation”. At that time Carme was 53. She managed to resist for a year and two months. “As she was dying, they threw her on top of a pile of corpses that they had laid out between two barracks. Some bodies were still moving. Two French women recognized her and, at night, under the light of the searchlights and in spite of the danger of being discovered, dragged her to her barrack. There, amidst the darkness and in deep silence, she passed away in the arms of another Catalan woman, Coloma Seró from Lleida. Upon hearing screams in Catalan coming from the pile of corpses, Coloma had approached to help her, but seeing that it was too late she stayed by her side and kept talking to her to make her feel closer to home.”

Sabina González survived her and was to undergo two more transfers: to the Flossembürg camp and to the Helmbrechts labour camp, where she was forced to work manufacturing ammunition and parts for the German army. Coloma Seró[2], the woman who had helped Carme Gardell have a “good death” kept her wedding ring and later gave it back in person to her family.