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Remarkable Heroes and Heroines of the French Resistance in World War II

Khalid Elhassan May 12, 2025 18 min

Resistance - Women and men of the French Resistance — Women and men of the French Resistance. Pegasus Battlefield Tours

15. Sorkine’s Postwar Career

Resistance - Charlotte Sorkine demonstrates her wartime fake ID — Charlotte Sorkine demonstrates her wartime fake ID. The Forward

Sorkine also fought in the 1944 Paris Uprising that preceded that city’s liberation. For her wartime services, she was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance, the Croix du Combattant Volontaire de la Resistance, the Médaille des Services Volontaires Dans la France Libre, and the War Commemoration Medal. Sorkine resumed her education after the war. She studied psychology at the Sorbonne and art history at the Louvre, as well as languages.

She sailed to America to further her mental health studies, and to examine a model treatment center in Kansas in order to establish a similar one in Paris. During a rough crossing of the Atlantic, she met and befriended Ernest Hemingway. After her return to France, she married in a ceremony attended by her Resistance compatriots, and settled into family life and a rewarding professional career.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.