Claudine Chomat
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Biography
Claudine Chomat, who was born 7 February 1915 at Saint-Etienne (Loire) in France, and died on 14 October 1995 in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), was a member of the French Resistance 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 (l'Union des Jeunes Filles de France) in 1936, with Danielle Casanova, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, and Jeannette Vermeersch. 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 of the PCF.
In 1948, she became the wife of the communist leader, Laurent Casanova. As Casanova's wife, she suffered the disgrace of the party following the Servin-Casanova scandal in 1961.