Agnès Humbert Agnès Humbert ( 12 October 1894 – 19 September 1963 ) was an art historian , ethnographer and a member of the French Resistance during World War II . She has become well known through the publication of a translation of the diary of her experiences during the War in France and in German prisons at the time of the Nazi occupation . Biography . Early life . Agnès Dorothée Humbert , known as Agnès Humbert , was born on 12 October 1894 in Dieppe , France , daughter of French senator Charles Humbert and English author Mabel Wells Annie Rooke . She spent her childhood in Paris , where she studied painting and design . She was a pupil of Maurice Denis alongside Georges Hanna Sabbagh , whom she married in January 1916 . She then continued to paint , using the name Agnès Sabbert . They had two sons : Jean Sabbagh , a sub - mariner and advisor to General Charles de Gaulle , and television director and producer Pierre Sabbagh . However Agnès and Georges divorced in 1934 . From 1929 Humbert studied the history of art at the Sorbonne and at the Louvre school , and took postgraduate courses in philosophy and ethnography . She then worked as an art historian at the Musée national des Arts et Traditions Populaires ( then at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris ) becoming a close associate of the museum ' s director Georges - Henri Rivière . Her first publication was a book on the painter Louis David , published in 1936 . She broadcast on art on Radio Paris at the start of 1936 . Wartime resistance . From the fall of Paris until her arrest and interrogation by the Gestapo in April 1941 , Humbert kept a written diary . Apart from a few scribbled notes , she only resumed writing her diary after her liberation from prison four years later in April 1945 . The Nazis in Paris . A few days after the fall of Paris on 14 June 1940 , having fled Paris to be with her mother at the house of her cousin Daisy Drew at Vicq - sur - Breuilh , by chance she heard an appeal by General de Gaulle on the BBC ' s Radio France encouraging the people of France to continue the struggle against the occupying Germans and the Vichy government . It was offensive to her when books were removed from her library by the Germans , and German authors added . On 6 August a notice was fixed on the gateway of the Palais de Chaillot , ordering free entry to German soldiers , and she wrote in her diary that she told her colleague Jean Cassou " I feel I will go mad , literally , if I don ' t do something ! " . So , with Boris Vildé , Anatole Lewitsky , Jean Cassou and Yvonne Oddon she formed the Groupe du musée de l ' Homme out of members of the Museum , the first resistance movement in occupied France . In a few months these pioneers built a highly diffuse underground network . Their action spread rapidly with the creation of a clandestine newsletter , " Résistance " , which had only five issues , between 15 December 1940 and the end of March 1941 , with editorials ( the first written by Boris Vildé ) holding no illusions on Pétain and the Vichy government . This group went on to feed information to the British . Trials and Imprisonment . The leaders of the resistance cell were betrayed and arrested in April 1941 . Humbert then recruited Pierre Brossolette to continue with the last number of " Résistance " before being arrested herself . The Museum group were sent to the harsh Cherche - Midi prison and then Fresnes Prison in Paris where they were tried by the Wehrmacht and in February 1942 , along with seven members of the group , sentenced to death . However she was transferred to the Prison de la Santé where conditions were better and she was visited by her son Pierre and her mother , but she learnt that the men had been put to death by firing squad ( they sang " Vive la France " in their last moments ) . The Women ' s Prison . The women were sentenced to 5 years slave labour and deported to Anrath prison in Germany . Humbert was made to work in appalling conditions at the Phrix rayon factory in Krefeld : there workers died , went blind , and developed horrible skin conditions . Liberation and after . After four years , in June 1945 she was liberated by the Third United States Army and her diary records how she took part in the " Nazi Hunt " at Wanfried in 1945 . She set up soup kitchens for refugees and expressly stated that everyone was to get a share , even the German civilians . Later she helped to start the denazification process . Post - war . After the war Humbert refused to return to work at the Museum . Though her health had been affected by her experiences , she continued to write books on art . In 1949 she was awarded the Croix de Guerre with silver gilt palm for heroism . She spent her final years with her son Pierre in the village of Valmondois and is buried in the cemetery there . She published her diary under the title " Notre Guerre " in 1946 . This was later reissued as well as being translated into English by Barbara Mellor under the title : " Résistance " . Her Journal :