retrovintageglamour:

The gorgeous Mireille Balin, one of my favorite French actresses.

Her story’s absolutely heartbreaking. Long story short, she was a huge star in the 1930s, but her love for a young German officer during the war costed her her career, her popularity, her friends, her health, her beauty and eventually her life. 
It’s important to know that she had absolutely no sympathy for the nazi regime, she was just passionately in love with a handsome young man who happened to be German at that time. All they wanted was to be together, but in 1944, while trying to flee to Italy, they got arrested by the French army. Her lover was immediately executed, and she was gang-raped multiple times before being sent to prison where she stayed until January 1945.
She died penniless, alone and forgotten by everyone in 1968, at the age of 59.