An anthropologist, Tillion was studying the Berbers in Algeria when Germany invaded France in World War II. She returned to Paris to help organize the French Resistance. She was betrayed by a priest and arrested by the Nazis. Sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, she was the only one of the organizers of her cell to survive.
While living in the camp, she taught other prisoners history, and wrote a plan to reform education in France after the war. In the 1950s, Saadi Yacef, the leader of Algeria’s National Liberation Front, asked Tillion to intercede in its war of independence against France. She worked to ensure France didn’t let Algeria wallow in poverty, and fought against France’s use of torture of Algerian prisoners, comparing it to “specters of the Gestapo.”
In return, Yacef ordered his troops to stand down, which they did until he was overthrown. Tillion was one of only five women to receive the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. She died April 19 at her home in France. She was 100.