page_title: Madeleine Truel
section_title: Last moments
hierarchical_section_title: Madeleine Truel / Last moments
caption_attribution_description: English: The town of Stolpe, Parchim seen from Schulstraße, looking north-west. Deutsch: Die Stadt Stolpe (Mecklenburg), von der Schulstraße in Richtung Nordwesten gesehen.
context_page_description: Madeleine Truel, was a Peruvian woman of French parentage who fought in the French Resistance. The exact date of Madeleine Truel's alliance with the French Resistance is unknown. She worked as a document forger. She was captured in 1944 and was tortured to extract information without success, following which she was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1945. She died in Stolpe on 3 May 1945, after the so-called "death march", a few hours before the Russian troops arrived. Her full name, Madeleine Blanche Pauline Truel Larrabure, appears on a monument in homage to all those who were deported from France and perished during the Second World War.
context_section_description: The end of the war was near. The Soviet army was approaching from the east and the U.S. military from the west. German troops began to become disorganized and started to flee in what was to be known as the "Death March" which refers to the transfer of thousands of prisoners from the concentration camps near the war fronts in late 1944 and early 1945.
  The Death March of Sachsenhausen concentration camp to Lübeck, located just over 100 miles away, began on 22 April. Many prisoners, exhausted by malnutrition and bad weather, were dying along the way. The purpose of these marches was to hide all evidence of the brutality that was suffered in the concentration camps. A German soldier impatient with the slowness of the marching prisoners began to beat some of them furiously with a steel rod. One of these victims was Madeleine.
  A few hours later the Germans abandoned the marching prisoners and stripped off their uniforms to hide from the Russian troops that were pursuing them. Madeleine lost consciousness for a moment and was carried on a stretcher by her fellow prisoners. In spite of her small stature it took six people to do the task. The group of survivors arrived in a small German town called Stolpe. When she came to consciousness she suffered a strong headache and a high fever. Shortly afterwards, she died.
caption: The approach to Stolpe from the south-east
exif: {"Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-G5", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.0", "Image DateTime": "2016:03:19 16:47:50", "Image Artist": "Mirokado", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "Mirokado", "Image ExifOffset": "690", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSTimeStamp": "[14, 47, 50]", "GPS GPSDate": "2016:03:19", "Image GPSInfo": "11342", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 14, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Image Tag 0xC6D2": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ... ]", "Image Tag 0xC6D3": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "11538", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4307", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/1300", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "160", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Standard Output Sensitivity", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:03:19 16:47:50", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2016:03:19 16:47:50", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "929/256", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "14", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4608", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3456", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "11312", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "28", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}