Brauner, Françoise

Françoise Brauner, born Fritzi Erna Riesel (16 April 1911 - 14 September 2000) was an Austrian-born French pediatrician and child psychiatrist who was part of the medical contingent of International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and was an Austrian Resistance member during Occupied France. She has devoted her medical career to educating refugee, displaced and maladjusted children, participating in the welcoming of Jewish child survivors of the Kristallnacht and of the Nazi concentration camps of Buchenwald and Auschwitz from 1939 to 1946 and working on autism in France since 1956. She also pioneered the analysis of children's drawings in war, creating from 1937 the first collection of drawing-testimonials to offer a unique perspective of the major conflicts of the 20th century through the eyes of children.