Album "Châteaux de la Loire"

Album of postcards depicting the châteaux of the Loire, probably dating from the late 1930s. 

A precious and moving inscription by General de Gaulle, on the verso of the album's title page, containing seventeen views of châteaux in the Loire valley: "Offered by my dear niece Geneviève", signed with his initials. It is with these very words that he presented her his war memoirs: "To my dear niece Geneviève, who was, at once, to the very end, on the brink of death, a soldier of Free France, and whose example has served me."

"Charles de Gaulle and Geneviève de Gaulle are two very similar figures, sharing a great deal in common, who developed a special bond very early on. The same could not be said of many of the General's other nephews and nieces. Geneviève and her uncle share the same spiritual depth. Both are rather mystical, deeply believing, yet with a profound engagement of the soul, and they are close intellectually.
Do they not share a very strong taste for history? Charles is a great connoisseur of French history; he wrote books on the subject and was also one of its actors. His own grandfather, Julien-Philippe, was a graduate of the École des chartes. And his father, Henri de Gaulle, thus Geneviève's grandfather, was a history teacher. Geneviève too knows this passion.
Geneviève and Charles de Gaulle also share the same complex relationship with Germany. Let us not forget that Charles, like Xavier de Gaulle, is a survivor of the First World War. He explained, moreover, that not having been killed at Douaumont, having been left for dead on the battlefield, was the "heavy problem of my life". He then spent several years in captivity in Germany. Geneviève, for her part, spent her childhood there. There too she confronted death, in her very flesh, and these kindred experiences certainly echo between uncle and niece.
Furthermore, owing to the successive tragedies suffered by his elder brother's family, Charles de Gaulle took particular care of his nephews and nieces. He welcomed Geneviève, her sister and her brother for the holidays, and a closeness took hold through conversations, outings and Christmases spent together". (Frédérique Neau-Dufour in Philippe Collin (ed.), Les Résistantes

Le rôle crucial des femmes face au nazisme).

After her uncle's famous broadcast appeal from London 18 June 1940, Geneviève turned to resistance, tearing down the occupier's posters. She then joined the Musée de l'Homme network (1941), followed by Défense de la France (1943), before being arrested and deported to Ravensbrück. Her political influence on de Gaulle has been remarked upon many times. She introduced Germaine Tillion to de Gaulle in 1946 and, in 1958, persuaded him to entrust Malraux with responsibilities equal to his stature, whence the Ministry of Cultural Affairs was born. She would also serve as a constant intermediary on Algeria, relaying the appeals for clemency of the condemned FLN members whom de Gaulle would honour in 1959: "In the mid-sixties, Geneviève, president of ATD Quart Monde, came to plead the cause of the poorest, at the Élysée and at Colombey [de Gaulle's estate], where she was always a welcome guest. The President confessed that he was ten years too old to be capable of truly changing things, in reply to this young woman who wished to place the ideal of the Resistance at the service of humanity. After leaving power, de Gaulle wrote to her from Ireland: 'You were, at the gravest of moments, and with what courage and what suffering, one of the finest of my "companions". Nor have you ever, since, ceased to be one.'" (Christine Kerdellant, De Gaulle et les femmes).

A rare witness to the bond of "spiritual and intellectual complicity without equal within the de Gaulle family." (Frédérique Neau-Dufour in Gaullistes, femmes et réseaux) that Geneviève de Gaulle Anthonioz shared with her uncle, both of them unwavering in their defence of France.