Claudine Chomat, who was born 7 February 1915 at Saint-Etienne

Saint-Étienne

Saint-Étienne is a city in eastern central France. It is located in the Massif Central, southwest of Lyon in the Rhône-Alpes region, along the trunk road that connects Toulouse with Lyon...

 (Loire) in France, and died on 14 October 1995 in Boulogne-Billancourt

Boulogne-Billancourt

Boulogne-Billancourt is a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Boulogne-Billancourt is a sub-prefecture of the Hauts-de-Seine department and the seat of the Arrondissement of Boulogne-Billancourt....

 (Hauts-de-Seine

Hauts-de-Seine

Hauts-de-Seine is designated number 92 of the 101 départements in France. It is part of the Île-de-France region, and covers the western inner suburbs of Paris...

), was a member of the French Resistance

French Resistance

The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...

 and a French communist militant.

She committed herself to the French Communist Party in 1934 and helped found the Union of Young Girls in France

Mouvement Jeunes Communistes de France

The Mouvement Jeunes communistes de France , commonly called the "JC" , is a political youth organisation, close to the French communist party....

 (l'Union des Jeunes Filles de France) in 1936, with Danielle Casanova

Danielle Casanova

Danielle Casanova was a French militant communist and member of the French resistance. She was responsible for the French Communist Youth before founding the Union des jeunes filles de France...

, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier

Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier

Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, , whose real name was Marie-Claude Vogel, was a member of the French Resistance.-Photographer:...

, and Jeannette Vermeersch

Jeannette Vermeersch

Jeannette Vermeersch was a French politician.She is principally known for having been the companion and then the wife of Maurice Thorez, general secretary of the French Communist Party , with whom she had three children, born before their union was made official.-Biography:Born...

. In 1937, she married Victor Michaut, a communist leader; the marriage lasted ten years.

At the end of 1939, she participated in the reorganization of the French Communist Party (PCF) which had been made illegal by the Edouard Deladier government. She led the women's resistance committees beginning in 1941, she founded the Union of French Women (today called Femmes solidaires) in 1944, and she served as secretary-general of that organization. In 1950, she joined the central committee

Central Committee

Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...

 of the PCF.

In 1948, she became the wife of the communist leader, Laurent Casanova

Laurent Casanova

Laurent Casanova was a French politician. Born 9 October 1906 at Souk Ahras, Algeria, he died 20 March 1972 in Paris.-Political career:Of Corsican origins, Casanova studied law at university in Paris. He became secretary of the Communist cell there, and he entered the underground apparatus of the...

. As Casanova's wife, she suffered the disgrace of the party following the Servin-Casanova scandal in 1961.