Yvette Jeannine Baumann was born in the 16th arrondissement of Paris in 1919. Since her family was not particularly religious, she realized she was Jewish only when she was a young teenager at the Lycée Molière in Paris and encountered anti-semitism – even from some of her teachers. In 1941, at the age of 21, she joined the Resistance, as did her brother Jean-Pierre and sister Claudine. At first she worked under the leadership of Berthe “Berty” Albrecht, one of France’s earliest Resistance fighters, who had co-founded the Resistance movement known as Combat. Yvette started off with small acts of defiance and disruption of the Nazi occupiers, painting victory signs or the Cross of Lorraine (the Resistance symbol) on walls, changing streets signs to misdirect German vehicles, as well as procuring food, clothes and documents for résistants and Jewish families. When Berty died in 1943, Yvette took over her role as head of “social services” for the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (MUR), a merger of three major Resistance groups – Combat, Franc-tireurs (Sharpshooters) and Libération Sud. As such, Yvette was in charge of finding safe houses and food for Resistance fighters, their families and Jews in hiding.