Member or Cooperating Agencies with the Nimes Committee

Part 3: Committee for Assistance to Refugees (CAR) through Douvaine Network 

Committee for Assistance to Refugees from Germany

(Comité de Assistance aux Réfugies de Allemagne; CAR), Paris, Marseilles, 1939-1943?

The Committee for Assistance to Refugees was an important French Jewish aid groups.  It was established from the Comité National de Secours, which was established in 1933 to aid German refugees.  This Committee worked with the French government.  CAR was financed by the Rothschild family and its leaders were important and respected French leaders, who included: Albert Lévy, Raymond Raul Lambert, and Gaston Kahn.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) was a major supporter of CAR in its rescue and relief efforts. 

[Adler, J. The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution. (New York, 1987), pp. 90, 98, 261n.  Bauer, Yehuda. American Jewry and the Holocaust. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), pp. 153-155, 158, 167, 170, 222, 226, 237, 241.  Caron, Vicki. Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933-1942. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 125, 165f, 213-219, 233, 251, 302-305, 308-309, 315, 318, 335, 361-362.  Cohen, R. I. The Burden of Conscience: French Jewish Leadership during the Holocaust. (Bloomington, 1987), pp. 29-35, 38-39, 41, 43, 53, 69, 71.  Rayski, Adam. The Choice of Jews Under Vichy, Between Submission and Resistance. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press and US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 2005), pp. 60, 182.  Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 2, 161.]

Albert Lévy

Raymond Raul Lambert

Gaston Kahn

Coordinating Committee for Assistance in the Camps

(Comité de Coordination pour l’Assistance dans les Camps), France

Marc Boegner●, founder Comité Inter-Mouvements Aupres des Evacues, France, National      Protestant Federation

Committee on Children

Composed of AFSC, Secours Suisse, OSE, operated in France (Ryan, 1996)

Conseil Protestant de la Jeunesse (Protestant Youth Council)

The following is a list of Protestant pastors and their families that were active in rescuing Jews in the South of France.

Madelein Barot●, founder, Comité d’Inter-Mouvement Aupres des Evacués (CIMADE)

Barot, Madeleine File 3830 Madeleine Barot was active in Protestant youth movements, and secretary general of CIMADE which was established as an umbrella organization for these movements. CIMADE provided welfare for evacuees from localities along the French-German border. Since most of these evacuees returned home in the summer of 1940, the organization decided to assist victims of the Vichy regime and the occupation, most of whom were foreign Jews. In the autumn of 1940, destitute Jewish women were giving birth in the concentration camp at Gurs, in southern France. Barot presented herself at the camp gate carrying a package of bedding for the newborn infants and told the guard that she had to distribute its contents to the new mothers. Thus Barot managed to enter the camp and, together with another CIMADE activist, Jeanne Merle d’Aubigné, she visited every day, each time on a different pretext. After receiving permission from the commander of Gurs to open a CIMADE branch in a barrack, Barot took up residence in the camp. The YMCA, through diplomatic channels, unsuccessfully petitioned the Vichy authorities for entry permits for CIMADE representatives. Due to Barot’s resourcefulness and courage, she and her associates were nonetheless able to accomplish their mission. CIMADE’s presence in Gurs became a fait accompli, and Barot struggled to effect the release of camp inmates. She succeeded in having children, ill adults, and the elderly transferred to facilities that she opened under CIMADE auspices, mainly in the town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

From the summer of 1942, Jews brought to these institutions also faced the danger of arrest, but Barot resolutely used underground strategies to protect her wards -- providing false papers and transferring some to other institutions and some to Switzerland. Barot’s activities are believed to have saved hundreds of Jews. On March 28, 1988, Yad Vashem recognized Madeleine Barot as Righteous Among the Nations.

Olga St. Blancat Baumgarten, Salvation Army Represenative, Belfort

Pastor Besson

Pastor Andre Betrix● (Bettex), Mazet-Ste.-Foy, Department of Haute-Loire

Bettex, Pastor André File 3834 In the years 1934-1945, André Bettex was pastor of a Protestant congregation in Mazet-Ste. -Foy, a village in the département of Haute-Loire, about five kilometers west of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a Protestant stronghold in France. Pastor Bettex was schooled in the tolerant tradition of Protestant Christians and had sympathy and respect for the Jews, whom he regarded as the chosen people. When the plight of the Jews in France worsened, particularly after Germany occupied southern France in November 1942, Pastor Bettex opened his doors to Jews and offered every possible assistance. He accommodated Jews in his home for a night, several days, or even longer, until he found them a hiding place with his congregants or on a nearby farm. Serge Vollweiler, a refugee from Germany, was one of the Jews whom Bettex helped. Vollweiler was about eighteen years old in March 1943, when he arrived at the pastor’s house after fleeing from a children’s home near Le Chambon where he hid previously. The French police discovered his hiding place and came to arrest him, but Vollweiler escaped to the forest, where he stayed for three days before mustering the courage to knock on Bettex’s door. After providing him with forged papers and ration cards in the name of Pierre Bernardon, the pastor sent him to Joseph Argaud● (q.v.), a member of his congregation. Vollweiler became a farmer and shepherd on Argaud’s farm and remained there for the rest of the occupation.

Pastor Bettex visited him occasionally to hear that all was well. Vollweiler and Pastor Bettex remained close after the liberation, and Vollweiler, who made a point of visiting “his” pastor, subsequently introduced him to his family. On March 28, 1988, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor André Bettex as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Joseph Bourdon● and wife, Henriette●, Cevennes, Protestant seminary in Mende, Department of Lozere; worked with CIMADE

Bourdon, Pastor Joseph Bourdon, Henriette File 2698n The Reverend Joseph Bourdon was a lecturer at a Protestant seminary in Mende, capital of the département of Lozère. CIMADE, an organization that hid refugees and supplied them with forged papers and ration cards, was particularly active in the area. Bourdon and his wife belonged to CIMADE and procured forged papers for Jews hidden by the organization. After the war, Fanny Gutwirth recounted that in July 1942, she had come to Mende, in the southern zone, with her parents and her brother Azriel. After receiving forged Belgian papers and ration cards, the Gutwirths rented an apartment from a family that lived opposite the seminary. In the summer of 1944, fearing that their son Azriel would be drafted for forced labor, the Gutwirths turned to Pastor Bourdon in the nearby seminary and apprised him of their situation. Bourdon sent the parents to Pastor André Gall● (q.v.) in Florac and their two children to Pastor François Chazel● (q.v.) in Vebron, a village on the Cévennes plateau. Henriette Bourdon lent Fanny Gutwirth her bicycle so that she could reach her destination safely. Dr. Marc Monod, who was active in rescuing Jews in the département of Lozère, testified that Bourdon had contacts with various authorities and used them to warn Monod and the Jews who were in hiding with local families, about planned army and police actions. This enabled them to escape into nearby valleys until the danger had passed. On December 22, 1983, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Joseph Bourdon and his wife Henriette as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Elie Brée●, Caveirac, Department of Gard, Cevenol Plateau

Brée, Pastor Elie File 2698c Pastor Elie Brée, a Protestant minister, served in Caveirac, in the département of Gard, and helped make the Plateau Cevenol, the hilly region where he lived, a safe refuge for many scores of fugitives from the Vichy regime, mostly Jews. He urged his congregation to help people in distress and hide them from the security forces. Brée located peasant families willing to hide Jews in their homes. Brée, and his clerical colleagues, Edmond Peloux● (q.v.) and Roland Pollex● (q.v.), assumed full responsibility for two children of the Lazarsfeld family, Jewish refugees from Austria, and placed them with foster families who protected them and provided for them from December 1942 until the liberation. On January 5, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized the Reverend Elie Brée as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Paul Brunel●, Nîmes, and Mme. Brunel

Brunel, Pastor Paul Brunel, Charlotte File 2698k The Reverend Paul Brunel (b.1884) headed the Protestant church in Nîmes, the capital of the département of Gard. Because of his position, he had contact with Vichy functionaries, especially at the municipality and in the gendarmerie, and he occasionally went to see them to secure the release of people who had been arrested. Brunel was not only acquainted with his own congregation members but also with many Jews in Nîmes. When the nature of the Vichy collaboration with the Germans became clear, Brunel joined the group of Protestant clergy under Pastor Marc Boegner● (q.v.). This group helped Resistance fighters and persecuted persons. After the Germans occupied all of France, the group redoubled its efforts, concentrating mainly on providing aid to Jews. Although the local Gestapo commander stated publicly that a Protestant minister’s word was untrustworthy, the commander did not dare to attack him. Brunel helped the Kuhns, a Jewish family who left Paris at the very beginning of the war, to seek refuge in the south. M. Kuhn and his older daughter were arrested at the demarcation line, their fate sealed. Mme Kuhn managed to reach Nîmes with her thirteen-year-old daughter Gisèle and her four-year-old son Marcel. She asked Brunel for help, and he placed her with a French family as a domestic and found a small apartment for her. The two children were brought to an orphanage run by Brunel’s loyal friends, Mlle Danielle and Mme Jeanne Aigoun, the latter known as Tante Jeanne.

Brunel explained to Gisèle and Marcel that they would be Protestants until the end of the war and could then revert to being Jews. One day, in an attempt to join her mother, Gisèle left the orphanage and was arrested by the police. She was first sent to Drancy and then to a concentration camp in northern Germany. American troops liberated the camp on the day she was to be sent to her death. After a brief convalescence in Sweden, Gisèle returnedto Nîmes to locate her family and rescuer. Marcel Kuhn, who had been too little to understand, did not begin to think about the war and the man who had saved his life until much later, after he had established a family of his own. He returned to Nîmes and met with Pastor Brunel, with whom he remained in contact for many years. On January 5, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Paul Brunel and his wife as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Charles Cabanis●, Bedarieux, Herault

Villaret, Louis Villaret, Yvonne Bonnafous, Henri Bonnafous, Adrienne Cabanis, Charles Delperie Noelie, Mother Superior Albert-Marie Hyacinthe, Sister Fabre, Mathilde Laurent, Albert Lavolte, Mathilde Seventeen people helped to rescue four members of the Weiler family, German Jews who had sought refuge in France in the 1930s and who had moved to Bédarieux (Hérault) after the invasion. Emil Weiler was a doctor, but found work as a bookkeeper. He also gave private English lessons and his wife gave German lessons to help make ends meet. Louis Villaret’s daughter, who worked at the slaughterhouse, his wife Yvonne and the daughter of Charles Cabanis, pastor of the local Protestant church, were among their pupils. After the German invasion of the southern zone, the Weilers decided to place their two daughters in safety. The Villarets accommodated eight-year-old Rachel, at no charge, from November 1942 until the spring of 1943. Under the same conditions, Henri Bonnafous, a retired diplomat, and his wife Adrienne, took in 11-year-old Hanna. After an aborted attempt to have their daughters smuggled into Switzerland, the Weilers contacted the Children’s Relief Organization (OSE), which succeeded in placing them at the Dominican convent in Monteils (Aveyron). The nuns there, influenced by Monsignor Saliège*, were already accommodating about 10 other Jewish children. Mother Superior Albert-Marie and the boarding school’s director Sister Hyacinthe were the only ones who knew the two girls’ Jewish identity.

They made them feel welcome during their stay at the convent from the spring of 1943 to May 1944. In January of the same year, an employee of the Bédarieux town hall, Yvonne Dougada, warned the Weiler couple that the police had asked to see their file. This worried them, and so they disappeared underground. Mathilde Fabre, a postal worker, offered them shelter in her house where she lived alone. Pastor Cabanis and Louis Villeret, with the help of a grocerycouple, the Verdaguers, ensured that they received provisions. In May 1944, however, the nuns were warned of an upcoming search by the Germans. They informed the parents that they would have to take their girls out of the convent and find a safer place for them. As it was impossible for the Weilers to go anywhere, Charles Cabanis intervened once again. He took charge of having the girls transferred to Toulouse, to the home of Pastor Piat, and then to an isolated farm in the village of Carla-Bayle (Pyrénées-Orientales). There, they were taken in by Albert Laurent, a single farmer, and his niece Mathilde, who Charles Cabanis had known before the war when he had served as the village pastor. The two girls lived with the Laurents at no charge until the Liberation, when the entire family was reunited. On October 30, 2001, Yad Vashem recognized Louis and Yvonne Villaret, Henri and Adrienne Bonnafous, Charles Cabanis, Sister Albert-Marie and Sister Hyacinthe, Mathilde Fabre, Albert Laurent and his niece Mathilde Laurent, as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Paul & Odette Chapal●

Chapal, Pastor Paul Chapal, Odette File 5359 With the help of his wife, Odette, Pastor Chapal transformed the vicarage of Annecy, in the départment of Haute-Savoie) into a shelter for refugees, both Jews and non-Jews, fleeing occupied France and preparing to cross the Swiss border. Chapal was a member of CIMADE, a Protestant rescue network that saved hundreds of Jews and non-Jews by helping them escape France and looking after them in Switzerland. Chapal was awarded the Orange-Nassau Order of the Netherlands for rescuing pilots who made forced landings in France. His wife, Odette, whose experience in a senior post in the French scout movement gave her added skills in helping the refugees, was an active partner. Claude Spire, a refugee who lived in Annecy from August 1940 to 1945, was a high-school classmate and very good friend of Jeannie Chapal, the oldest of the Chapals’ five children. After the war, Spire recounted that it was very difficult for the children sheltered with the Chapals to stay cooped up for days on end in a closed space such as an attic or a cellar. To ease the situation, Odette prepared an outdoor corridor. She hung a clothesline, suspended blankets and large sheets on it that she fastened to the ground with large stones so that even the children’s feet were invisible. Jeannie and Claude calmed the children by taking them on “outings” in this fashion. Through friends, the Chapals had food delivered to the house and allayed neighbors’ suspicions by claiming that the food was for “guests.”

Jeannie was an active assistant in her parents’ rescue operations. Chapal and his wife, who were known for their modesty, did not accept the Righteous Among the Nations medallion, telling their children that they had simply “done the right thing” during the occupation. On September 20, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Paul Chapal and his wife Odette as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Francois Chazel●, Vérbon et Rousses, Cevennes

Chazel, Pastor François Chazel, Liliane File 2698b During the occupation, Pastor François Chazel (b. 1914) was the pastor of Vebron and Rousses, two poor villages in the département of Lozère. When persecution of the Jews began shortly after the establishment of the Vichy regime, Chazel and his wife Liliane (b. 1912) became active in the Protestant organization CIMADE (Commission Inter-Mouvements auprès des Evacués) and engaged in sheltering families and individuals in remote valleys in the Cévennes Mountains. They found people willing to take in refugees and warned of impending raids. The Chazels vigilantly assisted everyone in need during this period, relying on the cooperation and solidarity of the residents of Vebron and Rousses: the mayor, postal workers, physicians, and even gendarmes. After the war, Fanny Hadari (Gutwirth), a Jewish woman born in 1919, told that in July 1942 she and her parents, Hélène and Elias Gutwirth, and her brother Azriel, made their way to Mende, the capital of the département of Lozère, which was still in the unoccupied zone. After acquiring forged Belgian papers and ration cards, they were housed across from the Protestant seminary and established a relationship with Joseph Bourdon● (q.v.), the pastor of the seminary. A few months later, the Germans occupied the south of France, but the situation did not become critical where they were until the Allies landed in Normandy. German forces controlled all roads leading out of Mende.

Hélène and Elias Gutwirth were smuggled out of town on back roads; their children, following Bourdon’s instructions, fled by bicycle to the Chazels’ home. The Chazels provided the youngsters with forged papers and sheltered them for two days. Pastor Chazel then found them another refuge with a farmer, who explained to the neighbors that he had hired them to help with farm chores. Chazel remained in touch with them until the end of the occupation. After the war, Hélène Gutwirth recalled long philosophicaldiscussions with Chazel and the friendly advice he had given. Immediately after the liberation, Chazel was appointed director of the civil-affairs department in the préfecture of Lozère. Even after she immigrated with her son to Israel, Hélène Gutwirth continued to correspond with Chazel. In her postwar testimony, Liliane Chazel was able to list the names of dozens of Jews whom she and her husband had saved, hidden, or protected by providing false papers and real jobs. Many of them continued to correspond with her after the war. She credited the rescue mission’s success to the solidarity of the residents of the humble Christian community of Vebron and Rousses. Thus the mayor, Théophile Hugon, a retired lay teacher, was asked to give the departmental office a list of Jews who lived in his area of jurisdiction. He refused, simply declaring, “Look, here in Vébron we have a Catholic church and a Protestant church, so I can count the Catholics and Protestants. But we don’t have a synagogue.” On December 22, 1983, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor François Chazel and his wife Liliane as Righteous Among the Nations.

Liliane Chazel●, wife of Francois Chazel Vérbon et Rousses, Cevennes

Pastor Robert Cook●, Vabre, Department of Corrèze

Cook, Pastor Robert File 4680 In the spring of 1942, a group of about twenty German Jewish girls were smuggled out of the Gurs and Rivesaltes camps by the Jewish organization OSE (Organisation de Secours aux Enfants). They were placed in the care of the Jewish Scouts movement in Beaulieu, a village in the département of Corrèze. In August 1942, when mass arrests of Jews without French citizenship began, the French gendarmerie planned to send the girls back to the camps. The leaders of the Scouts movement decided to divide them up, but first, they had to be safely hid all together. Members of the Resistance in Vabre, a village in the département of Tarn, mobilized for the task: Hélène Rulland● (q.v.), a counselor in the Protestant Scouts movement, turned to Pastor Robert Cook, pastor of the Protestant church in Vabre, local headquarters of the French underground. With Cook’s consent, Rulland accommodated the Jewish girls in an abandoned farm nearby, the Maison de Rennes. Cook volunteered immediately to help the Jewish girls. He provided them with food and tried to create the atmosphere of a Scout camp involved with ordinary Scout activities. To allay the suspicion of local residents, Cook visited the farm every Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, to teach the Jewish girls the hymns sung during Sunday services. For their own safety, he had a small group of girls attend services every week. Thus, they knew how to behave like young Protestants, but, as an extra precaution, Cook seated them in the first row in the church.

The girls were hidden on the farm for nearly a month. Hubert Landes, a brigadier in the local police, assisted Cook. At the end of the operation, the group was split up and its members were smuggled into Switzerland. Notwithstanding the personal risk, Cook also furnished devoted assistance to other Jewish refugees in Vabre, which was a gathering point for many Jews in the area. On July 16, 1990, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Robert Cook as RighteousAmong the Nations.

Pastor Daniel Curtet●, Fay-sur-Lignon, a village near Le Chambon-sur-Lignon Southern France

Curtet, Pastor Daniel Curtet, Suzanne File 3797 In 1990, after Yad Vashem recognized Protestant minister Daniel Curtet as Righteous Among the Nations, he contacted the Israel Embassy in Paris and asked not to be awarded a personal citation of appreciation. He stated that many of his friends and acquaintances in and near the town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon had endangered their lives to save Jews during the occupation; in his opinion, they all deserved the State of Israel’s medal of honor. During the occupation, Pastor Curtet lived in Fay-sur-Lignon, a village near Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, which had many refugees, most of them Jews without French citizenship from Germany, Austria, and Poland. Pastor Curtet and his wife, who was active in the French underground both before and after their marriage, helped the refugees indefatigably, with warmth and kindness. They arranged refuge on local farms, provided false papers, and assured safe transport from one hiding place to another -- all without any payment. The Curtets, assisted by many local residents, often sheltered Jewish refugees and assisted those wishing to cross into Switzerland, thus saving many Jewish lives. They took great personal risk, aware that the penalty for hiding or aiding Jews during the occupation could be as severe as deportation to the camps in Germany. Oskar Rosowsky came from a Russian Jewish family that had migrated from Berlin to Nice, in 1933. His father was arrested in July 1942, deported to the camp at Drancy and from there sent to Auschwitz.

His mother, who had attempted to flee to Switzerland, was apprehended and interned at the camp in Rivesaltes, near the Spanish border. With the help of two Protestant acquaintances, Rosowsky obtained false papers for his mother, with which he brought her back to Nice. His mother moved to Fay-sur-Lignon in January 1943, and from then until August 1944, Pastor Curtet and his wife spared no effort to aid and protect her. They invited her to theirwedding, introducing her as a relative and thus lending credibility to her disguise as a Christian. Twice a month, Rosowsky, who was hiding in Le Chambon, bicycled to Fay-sur-Lignon and, via his mother, delivered forged papers to Pastor Curtet for Jews he was hiding. After the war, many survivors remained close friends with Curtet and many others maintained correspondence with him. On December 28, 1987, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Daniel Curtet and his wife, Suzanne, as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Louis Dallière●, Charmes, Department of Ardèche, and Marie Dallière, wife

Dallière, Pastor Louis Dallière, Marie File 4501 Louis Dallière, a Protestant minister, was active in the French underground Charmes, a town in the vicinity of Ardèche. The eminent Jewish author André Chouraqui knew Dallière before the war. In his postwar testimony, Chouraqui recounted that Dallière was known as a spiritual leader who acknowledged the religious mission of the Jewish people and exhorted his parishioners to protect Jews fleeing their German persecutors. Dallière’s assistance went beyond fine words. He provided precious assistance to the Jewish underground. As an underground operative, Chouraqui arranged shelter for Jewish children. Dallière advised him whom to contact and warned him about places that were dangerous to Jews and the underground. Chouraqui later stated that Dallière had effectively saved his life, because he could not have survived without the minister’s vital information. Anne Trachtenberg, born in St. Petersburg, Russia, also owed her life to Louis and Marie Dallière. From 1939 on, Trachtenberg lived in the Dallières’ home in Charmes, a town in the vicinity of Ardèche under the control of the Vichy regime. After the persecution of Jews began, the Dallières provided Trachtenberg with forged documents and registered her with the church, under an assumed name, as a baptized Protestant. In 1939-1940, Trachtenberg worked for the municipality as a secretary. The neighbors were accustomed to her as the minister’s tenant and let her live in peace.

In 1944, however, two German officers visited the minister’s home and asked questions about Trachtenberg. Dallière was not home, but his wife Marie persuaded the officers that Trachtenberg was not Jewish, showing the baptism ledger, which recorded that she had been baptized on December 31, 1934. The German officers accepted Marie Dallière’s claims and Trachtenberg was saved. She remained with the Dallières until the liberation. Her hosts did not ask for the slightest financial remuneration.After the war, she remained friends with the Dallières’ daughter. After Louis Dallière’s death, an institute bearing his name, devoted to the dissemination of his religious writings, was established in France. On January 8, 1990, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Louis Dallière and his wife Marie as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Charles Delizy●, Freycenent de Saint-Jeures, near Le Chambon-sur-Lignon

Delizy, Pastor Charles File 4006 Protestant minister Charles Delizy lived with his wife and children in Freycenent de Saint-Jeures, a small village near Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the département of Haute-Loire. The residents of the region were well known for the help they offered to refugees. After the outbreak of the great waves of deportations of Jews in France, many Jewish families arrived in the town and the surrounding area, looking for hiding places. The pastor arranged lodgings for the Jewish families and appealed to the consciences of his parishioniers. When Rolande Lehmann and her parents arrived in Saint-Jeure in 1944, Delizy provided forged identity and ration cards and placed them with peasants without revealing their Jewish identity. Every month, Delizy reported to administration headquarters and, outwitting a series of officials, obtained ration cards for the Jewish families. German agents and French militia regularly searched the area for Jews. When this occurred, Delizy warned the Jewish families and led them to a nearby forest, where they hid until the danger passed. The three surviving members of the Rheims family, who found refuge through Delizy’s efforts, subsequently described his goodheartedness and efforts to boost their morale. Every Friday evening, Jews from three different families visited the Delizys at home, listened to news broadcasts on the Swiss Radio, and discussed the situation. Rheims wrote satirical rhymes castigating members of the Vichy regime.

Delizy always rejected all forms of reward for his actions. Upon hearing that the State of Israel intended to recognize him as Righteous Among the Nations, he said, “We did not think that the little we did to help Jewish families would attract such a mark of recognition. Any merit of our action belongs to God, for it is He who placed love of the persecuted children of His people in our hearts, making us see them as brothers and sisters.” After the war, Delizy remained in touchwith the Jewish families and even visited them in Israel. On December 26, 1988, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Charles Delizy as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor and Mrs. Albert DeLord●, Carmax, Tarn, France

Delord, Pastor Albert File 3134 Protestant minister Albert Delord was discharged from the French army in 1940 and asked to be the pastor of Carmaux in the département of Tarn. Although Carmaux was not a large community, its many war refugees of diverse nationalities posed a real problem, and no public assistance had been arranged for them. With the help of a friend, Delord set to work. Unfortunately, the two men paid little attention to events taking place in Europe, notably the persecution of the Jews. In the summer of 1942, Pastor Delord hosted approximately a hundred children in a summer camp. One family urgently recalled their two daughters, because all Jews in the area were about to be arrested. Incredulous, Delord attempted to calm the parents. A few days later, he learned that the entire family had been arrested and deported to a concentration camp. Stunned, he rushed to the only French Jew he knew and offered his help to the Jewish community. Within forty-eight hours, dozens of Jewish families arrived in the village. Albert Delord opened his house to the refugees and mobilized his congregation. Everyone received a different task, such as supplying forged identity cards and intelligence services. Delord thus managed to absorb about 200 Jewish children from outlying villages. A quarter of them had been separated from their parents, who were arrested while they were in school. In 1944, he opened a summer camp in Lautrec and personally attended to everything.

He recruited Joseph Joffé, a Jewish doctor, as camp steward and doctor. Joffé worked in the camp for about five months, helping the children live in dignity and preventing illness. The people of the village had accepted the pastor’s initiative willingly. The mayor of Lautrec provided the children with forged papers and choice food at no charge, a baker in the town gave loans to the children, the pastor and his colleagues, and he later refused reimbursement. Other citizens did whatever theycould. Albert Delord became emotionally attached to the Jews he helped and remained in touch with some of them, whom he visited in Israel. On February 28, 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Albert Delord as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor J. Delpech, Comité d’Inter-Mouvement Aupres des Evacués (CIMADE)

Pastor Marc Donadille●, and wife,

Françoise Donadille●, Saint-Privat-de-Vallonge, Department of Lozère

Donadille, Pastor Marc Donadille, Françoise File 3370 Marc Donadille, a Protestant minister, lived with his wife Françoise, in Vialas, a village in the département of Lozère in southern France. Donadille and his friend and fellow clergyman, Henri Manen (q.v.), set to work to save Jews interned in the Les Milles camp. In the summer of 1942, Manen, who lived near Les Milles in Aix-en-Provence, began to extricate scores of Jewish children and several adults from the camp. He then referred some of them to Donadille, who, together with his wife, arranged hiding places in the area. Marianne Ahfeld and her husband were among the Jewish refugees entrusted to Donadille. The Ahfelds had hidden in Aix-en-Provence until the police discovered them. They were detained in the Les Milles camp. Henri Manen rescued them when they were about to be deported. Marc and Françoise Donadille sheltered them in a summer cottage in a forest near their home. Françoise Donadille brought the Ahfelds food every day. She arranged a place in a maternity hospital for Marianne Ahfeld, who was pregnant, and made sure that no harm befell her. After the birth, she cared for mother and baby. In February 1943, following a spate of arrests of Jews in the mountain region of the Cévennes, including Vialas, Pastor Donadille warned the prefect Dutruch, in the département capital of Mende, that the villagers would mount an armed rebellion if the arrests continued. Dutruch rushed to Donadille’s home, explained that he had to carry out the government’s orders, and asked him to placate the villagers.

Donadille replied, “I fully understand that you must send the police to make the arrests, but perhaps you might let them know that they are not obliged to find any Jews.” After the war, Marianne Ahfeld testified that scores of Jews owed their lives to the Donadilles. On March 20, 1986, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Marc Donadille and his wife Françoise as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Roland Dubois●

Dubois, Roland (Pastor) Dubois, Marthe Originally from Alsace, Pastor Roland Dubois and his wife had been evacuated from the region at the start of the war and had then retreated to Périgueux (Dordogne). The government allocated them a small place to live in a group of prefabricated blockhouses set up for the emergency. Their first child was born in 1942. Pastor Dubois met Mr. Plawner through an Alsatian friend, another fugitive named Mr. Sommer, who also worked at the military casern in Périgueux. A Jew of Polish origin, Mr. Plawner had first immigrated to Germany and then to France. Volunteering for military service at the start of the war, he was demobilized in the southern zone where his family joined him. He worked as a shoemaker at the 26 RI barracks for the French army’s supply services. During the roundups of foreign Jews in the southern zone, in August 1942 and especially in February 1943, and later when rumors of arrest began to circulate, Mr. Plawner slept at the barracks. His 12-year-old son, Maurice, hid and slept at the home of a friend’s parents who were cemetery caretakers. When German or Militia patrols got too close, he hid inside tombs or chapels or even in open graves. His mother and 15-year-old sister Emma found refuge with the Dubois family. His mother had already stayed there several times and was introduced as a cousin who had come to help Martha with the housework and the newborn baby. To prevent her foreign accent from being revealed, the couple explained that she was a deaf-mute.

In January 1943, Pastor Dubois made a request to the Dordogne police headquarters, which was met with a favorable response, and the word “Jew” was removed from Emma’s identity papers. To reinforce his story’s credibility, Pastor Dubois asked Maurice to join him and Emma in attending Protestant church services and Sunday school. The Plawners survived the war thanks to the protection of the Dubois couple. On May 11, 2005, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Rolandand Marthe Dubois as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Raymond Eugène Ducasse●, Aix-en-Provence (Bouches du Rhône)

Ducasse, Pastor Raymond-Eugène Ducasse, Robert File 5538a Pastor Raymond-Eugène Ducasse, of Aix-en-Provence, was a member of a rescue network that assisted refugees from Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine who had fled when the occupation authorities annexed these areas to the Reich. Pastor Ducasse and his son, Robert, manifested their opposition to the regime in whatever way they could. Pastor Ducasse provided Jewish refugees with forged baptismal certificates. His son, Robert, an officer in the Vichy navy, spied for the underground and provided forged identity cards. The head of the Jewish community in Luxembourg, Julien Meyer, fled to France with his wife and five children on January 20, 1941. They settled in Aix, where a small community of Luxembourg Jews had formed. Pastor Ducasse assisted the Meyers in conjunction with the Arbomont family● (q.v.), who hid the Meyers in their country home. Ducasse provided the forged identity cards and baptismal certificates. Other Jews also received forged papers from Ducasse, who continued to function in extreme danger even after his son Robert was arrested and executed by the Gestapo for his activities. On December 14, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Raymond-Eugène Ducasse and his son Robert as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Andre Dumas●, Comité d’Inter-Mouvement Aupres des Evacués (CIMADE), Rivesaltes French detention camp, Pyrenees Orientales

Dumas, Pastor André File 6368 André Dumas, a young theology student, was active in the Protestant organization CIMADE (Comité Intermouvements Auprès des Evacués), which operated in the Rivesaltes detention camp west of Perpignan, near the Spanish border. Dumas started a Scout group in Rivesaltes, which was very beneficial to the teenagers and other young internees. Scout meetings and other cultural activities were immeasurably more important in Rivesaltes than in time of peace, because they distracted the participants from their hunger and inspired hope that humanity had not vanished from the world. In January 1941, Isaac Kraemer, a young Jew from Mannheim, was transferred to Rivesaltes from Gurs. Kraemer joined the Scouts and became friendly with Dumas. In the summer of 1942, several teenage boys under the age of eighteen were sent out to work on farms in the vicinity of Moissac, in the département of Tarn-et-Garonne. In August, the authorities decided to send them back to the camps where they had originally been detained. Upon discovering the authorities’ intentions, several boys escaped and went into hiding. Over the next two weeks, they hiked and hitchhiked to the town of Annemasse near the Swiss border, where they joined a scout group about to cross into Switzerland. Kraemer, who had intended to join them, was captured and interned in the prison in Annecy. Before the authorities had decided his fate, he managed to send a letter to Dumas, who sent testimony on his behalf and a forged certificate.

Thanks to Dumas’s testimony, Kraemer was released and not returned to Rivesaltes. After the war, Kraemer discovered that Dumas had provided forged papers for other Jewish inmates at Rivesaltes, thus helping to save their lives. On December 26, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor André Dumas as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Edmond Ervard● (Baptist pastor), Ida Evrard● and sons, Daniel● and Louis●, Nice, Alpes-Maritime, France

Evrard, Pastor Edmond Evrard, Ida Evrard, Daniel Evrard, Louis File 6358 In the beginning of World War II, Edmond Evrard was the pastor of the Baptist community in Nice. The Italians were in control there and did not persecute Jews. When this area fell into German hands, it immediately became a death trap for the tens of thousands of Jews who had found refuge there. As early as 1940, Evrard explicitly denounced the anti-Jewish policies of the Vichy regime and the German authorities in his Sunday sermons, urging his congregants to help Jews who had lost their jobs, livelihoods, and property. The pastor worked closely with Jewish resistance groups. His wife and two sons, aged sixteen and eighteen, participated in his activities, notably by leading groups of Jewish children from Nice to the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and from there to Switzerland. The pastor and his sons were counselors in a Salvation Army summer camp in Le Chambon, and in that capacity they escorted their Jewish wards, dressed as Swiss Scouts, to the border. In late 1943, in response to the difficult situation, Pastor Evrard intensified his action. He sheltered various fugitives, chiefly Jews without French citizenship, for short periods until they could be placed in more permanent hiding places. With the assistance of Jewish underground members, he provided forged papers. Evrard’s church became a gathering point and shelter for Jews and a center of unusual activities.

On Purim of 1944, the building was lent to the Jews so they could read Megillat Esther (the Scroll of Esther). Evrard remained with the worshippers during the service while his sons kept watch on the street. That Passover, matza was brought to the church and distributed to the Jews. The pastor endangered himself by visiting Gestapo headquarters to demand the release of two Jewish women. One woman, Vera Kogan, who had been arrested in the summer of 1944, tried to commit suicide in her cell to avoid deportation. Kogan wastaken to the hospital, treated, and returned to jail. Evrard visited the prison three times and succeeded in persuading an officer there to release Kogan, saying that this would strengthen French-German relations. In the second case, at extreme risk, Evrard arranged the release of Mme Straussman, who had been arrested at the maternity hospital when she gave birth to her son, in early 1944. The local Gestapo commander, Strauss, was determined to send Straussman to Drancy. Right before Straussman was deported, Evrard convinced another officer to release her. On December 26, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Edmond Evrard, his wife Ida, and his sons Louis and Daniel as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Idebert Exbrayat● and wife, Yvonne Exbrayat●, Rodez, the capital of the Department of Aveyron

Exbrayat, Pastor Idebert Exbrayat, Yvonne File 1672 One night in late August 1942, Pastor Idebert Exbrayat was awakened by a knock on his front door. He was astonished to find his neighbor, the rabbi, his wife and five children, all seeking refuge from the police. The Exbrayats welcomed the family and agreed to shelter them. Thus began a new and dangerous chapter in the lives of the Exbrayat family, focused on saving Jews. The thirty-year-old Exbrayat and his wife Yvonne lived in Rodez, the capital of the départment of Aveyron, which was in the unoccupied zone until November 1942. Exbrayat’s church had been exposed to Catholic persecution for two hundred years, and so Exbrayat was familiar with religious persecution and empathetic to the Jewish refugees. After hiding the rabbi and his family, Exbrayat contacted M. Lifchitz, a Jew in Rodez, and asked how he could save Jews. Lifchitz told the pastor that he belonged to an underground organization that forged documents with which hidden Jews could obtain ration cards and, if they wished, even leave the country. Pastor Exbrayat and his wife joined the underground group of eight Jews in their extremely dangerous work. Eventually, the Germans killed four members of the group and captured and deported two others. In May 1940, Denise Sternberg, a Jewish pianist who was born in Paris, left that city for Rodez with her eighty-year-old mother. There they met Pastor Exbrayat, who, as Denise later testified, spared no effort in arranging shelter for Jews in distress.

The Sternbergs lived in Rodez until the Germans occupied southern France in November 1942. Upon discovering their names on a list of Jews slated for deportation, they turned to Pastor Exbrayat, who had their names deleted. He prepared forged papers and, in 1943, took them to the town of Villefranche de Rouergue and entrusted them to a policeman active in the underground. When this town was no longer safe, Exbrayat moved the Sternbergs to a friend’sapartment in Figeac, a town in the département of Lot. Every week for a full year, Exbrayat visited Sternberg and her mother and brought food. In September 1942, seventeen-year-old German Jewish Richard Lévy fled to Rodez. He turned to Pastor Exbrayat, who took him to the principal of the town high school, where he was given work in the kitchen. Soon, however, it was dangerous to hide in Rodez and Exbrayat provided Lévy with a hiding place and a job in a girls’ school in Figeac. In May 1944, the Germans raided Figeac, arrested 750 people, and searched the girls’ school. The principal alerted Exbrayat, who came and took Lévy to a friend who was the foreman of a coalmine. Lévy hid in a forest near the mine for two weeks. As soon as the danger passed, Exbrayat returned him to the school. After the war, Lévy disappeared; it was learned later that he had immigrated to the United States. In 1978, after he and Exbrayat renewed contct, Lévy invited the pastor and his wife to visit him in the United States. On September 13, 1979, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Idebert Exbrayat and his wife Yvonne as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Pierre Fouchier●, pastor in the Protestant community in Lezay (Deux-Sèvres). He played an active role in the Protestant rescue network whose principal center of activity was in Bordeaux.

Fouchier, Pierre Pierre Fouchier was a pastor in the Protestant community in Lezay (Deux-Sèvres). He played an active role in the Protestant rescue network whose principal center of activity was in Bordeaux. Organized around a core group of former Protestant Scouts (Eclaireurs Unionistes), this network counted in its ranks Professor Jacques Ellul*, former Unioniste leader Jean Bernyer and social worker Edith Cérézuelle*. Not all its members were Protestant. There was, for example, Germaine Courtiaux, who worked for the Prefecture police headquarters in Bordeaux and typed duplicates of all her reports to pass them on to her contacts. She was well placed to be informed of impending raids against the Jews and to pass along this information in time. Hélène Schweitzer*, another important figure in the network, manufactured false stamps engraved on linoleum. Pastor Fouchier welcomed in his home Jewish fugitives who had been sent to him by the network. He hid them until safer places could be found. The Hertz couple and their two children, fugitives from Strasbourg, had fled to an isolated property in Coirac (Gironde). In April 1944, they were warned of the danger of a raid by Jacques Ellul and found refuge at Pastor Fouchier’s home. He provided false identity papers for them. During their stay, they shared the second floor of the Fouchier house with Hélène Schweitzer, who calmly prepared the false documents the pastor’s wards needed. In case of danger, the servant, who participated in the clandestine activities of the network, would knock on the heating pipe with an agreed-upon sign.

At this signal, Hélène would hide all her material and everyone would disperse. Pastor Fouchier acted with humanity and patriotism, putting his life in danger to save Jews, Resistance members and others being pursued. On October 30, 2001, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Pierre Fouchier as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor André Gall● and wife,

Fleur Gall●, Florac, Cevennes, Department of Lozere

Gall, Pastor André Gall, Fleur File 2698m During the occupation, Protestant minister André Gall was pastor of Florac, a town in the département of Lozère. He and his wife Fleur risked their lives to hide Jewish refugees, attend to their needs, provide forged papers and ration cards, and arrange hiding places. In 1943, the Galls sheltered the painter Jacques Barison, who had fled from Gurs, and his wife Sonia. They escorted them to Montméjean, a small mountain village south of Florac, to the home of a teacher, Simone Serrière● (q.v.), who gave them refuge. That summer, local residents discovered the two Jewish fugitives. Fleur Gall sent them back to Florac, where her husband arranged another shelter for them. On December 22, 1983, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor André Gall and his wife Fleur as Righteous Among the Nations

Pastor Charles Guillon●, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, Department of Haute-Loire, secretary general Protestant Organization, World Secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Comité d’Inter-Mouvement Aupres des Evacués (CIMADE)

Guillon, Pastor Charles File 4897 “France lost its honor when it signed the armistice agreement with Germany; now it has to fight for its soul.” The author of this statement, Pastor Charles Guillon, fought without military weapons but with spiritual prisoner of warer. On June 23, 1940, Guillon tendered his resignation as the mayor of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the département of Haute-Loire. He explained that as secretary-general of a Protestant organization, his first commitment was to prisoners of war and refugees; this was inconsistent with serving as mayor in a regime collaborating with an occupier that was France’s enemy. Guillon labored on behalf of war refugees throughout the occupation and applied all his domestic and international religious contacts to obtain resources and funds to help camp internees of all faiths. After resigning from his position as mayor, Guillon worked for Protestant organizations. He was the world secretary of the YMCA, one of the four ranking members of an interdenominational ecumenical council based in Geneva, and was active in CIMADE, a French Protestant organization that established an agency which rescued Jewish children by taking them to Switzerland. On countless occasions and at great risk, Guillon crossed into France from Switzerland with large sums of money for the purchase of food parcels for camp internees and provisions for refugees. He also delivered intelligence information to freedom fighters in France and elsewhere.

Hundreds of Jews and non-Jews owe their lives and freedom to Guillon. His extraordinary personality and his ethical principles, which in the years preceding the occupation had made him the spiritual and moral leader of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, found practical expression during the harsh occupation years and attracted loyal followers. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon occupies a unique place in French history. Nowhere else were Jews saved so extensively and so generously. Pastor Guillon, himself, ran a networkthat rescued Jewish refugees from the Les Milles concentration camp near Aix-en-Provence; the refugees were then smuggled into Switzerland. The network was based at the YMCA office in Valence, in the département of Drôme. The Germans suspected Guillon, but he evaded them and went underground in the autumn of 1942. When France was liberated, Pastor Charles Guillon once more became mayor of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. On May 5, 1991, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Charles Guillon as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Paul Haering● and wife, Suzanne Haering●, Carmaux (Tarn)

Haering, Pastor Paul Haering, Suzanne File 4732 Paul Haering, a Protestant minister in Carmaux (Tarn), and his wife Suzanne assisted fugitive Jews in their area of residence. The Haerings took part in rescue actions orchestrated by Albert Delord (q.v.) and concealed Jews in their home until they could be provided with permanent shelter. In 1943, Pastor Haering began to forge identity cards and distribute them to Jews. In 1944, the Haerings “kidnapped” a Jewish boy from the hospital in Albi, the dèpartement capital, and delivered him to a family who hid him. Pastor Haering was especially active in the Protestant Scouts movement, where he went by the nickname “Père Loup.” Albert Koenigsberg testified after the war that in July–August 1944, when he was sixteen years old, Pastor Haering placed him in a Scouts summer camp in Lautrec (Tarn) that was not dispersed until after the area was liberated. Some 200 teenagers, including Jews using false names, took part in the camp. “Père Loup” treated Koenigsberg and his Jewish friends like his own children and even allowed them to observe the Sabbath, explaining, “From my standpoint, you are the People of the Book.” On August 21, 1990, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Paul Haering as Righteous Among the Nations. On December 22, 1997, Yad Vashem recognized Suzanne Haering as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor André Hammel● and Georgette Hammel●   

minister in the Reformed Church of France

Hammel, André Hammel, Georgette File 7293 Dr. André Hammel was a minister in the Reformed Church of France who had received several medals for his bravery in World War I. After training in psychiatry, he ran a small mental hospital in the middle of the Compiègne Forest (département of Oise) named Bethanie. Hammel was also the mayor of St.-Jean-aux-Bois, the small village where his hospital was located. In 1942-1944, Hammel hid eleven Jews in his hospital for various periods of time. These refugees were referred to him by a Protestant network. Among those who survived with Hammel’s assistance were Nicole Kahn, Olga Poliakoff-Rabinovitch and her daughter Veronique (both of whom joined the shelter in the hospital in the spring of 1944), Tanya Metzel (Veronique's half sister), and a Jewish couple of physicians from Poland by the name of Jossipovitch. Dr. Hammel treated his wards devotedly and generously and camouflaged them as “patients” with false names and identification cards. He provided food and care. In times of danger, during unexpected visits from the Germans, whose units were staioned in the area, or bombing, he hid the fugitives in the basement. Georgette, Hammel’s wife, helped her husband take care of both the real patients and the Jewish refugees during this time. She died suddenly of an asthma attack at the age of forty-four while getting ready to take a train to visit her son Jean-Pierre, a Resistance member who had been interned in the Fort Montluc detention camp.

Thus, Hammel was left alone with five children to raise. Despite the heavy burden, Hammel did not abandon his mission and continued to take care of his Jewish refugees. On August 27, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized André and Georgette Hammel as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Heuze, Reformed Church of Marseiles, France; interned and deported

Pastor Jeannet

Pastor Robert Joseph●, Clarensac, Department of Gard, Cévenol Plateau

Joseph, Pastor Robert File 2698f The Reverend Robert Joseph, a Protestant minister, served in Clarensac, in the département of Gard. He helped make the mountainous Plateau Cévenol a place of safe refuge for scores of fugitives from the Vichy regime, most of whom were Jewish. He preached to his congregation that it was their duty to help people in distress and hide them from the security forces. Joseph located peasant families who agreed to shelter Jews in their homes. In March 1943, he arranged asylum for M. and Mme Lazarsfeld, Jewish refugees from Austria, after he discovered that the Gestapo was searching for them. He also helped other Jews find shelter and attended to their needs while they were safely hidden. On January 5, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Robert Joseph as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Jean Joussellin●, Paris, Verberie Department of Oise, Council of Protestant Summer Camps

Jousselin, Pastor Jean File 1670 Jean Jousselin, a Protestant minister, lived in Paris and was involved in social work. After the Germans invaded France, the Vichy authorities asked him to establish youth care centers in occupied areas that had been bombed. Jousselin provided Jews with forged identity cards to facilitate their employment and then used his connections to place these Jews on staff. In 1941, Jousselin was disrcharged for openly fraternizing with Jews and supporting De Gaulle. In the summer of 1942, the Protestant community in Paris asked Jousselin to head the Maison Verte club, in the eleventh arrondissement, which held educational activities for youth. Aware of the plight of the Jewish residents of the arrondissement, Jousselin included their children in the club’s activities. By 1943, as the pressure on Parisian Jews increased, the Jews in the eleventh arrondissement knew that Jousselin was willing to help. Many Jews asked to have their children admitted to the summer camp for the Protestant community that Jousselin established on the Cappy estate in Verberie, in the département of Oise. Jousselin hid dozens of Jewish children there and provided them with forged identity cards. Through his underground contacts, Jousselin knew about impending raids on Parisian Jews and warned them. As the Jews’ predicament worsened, Jousselin decided to turn the summer camp in Cappy into an official children’s home. He established the Council of Protestant Summer Camps, so that he could acquire a legal permit and obtain assistance such as food allowances.

Jousselin also helped the Jewish children continue their education by enrolling them in schools in Verberie. Although he had much influence over these children, he never attempted to convert them. Simon Lewkowicz, one of eighty-seven Jewish children who stayed in Cappy, testified after the war that when he asked Jousselin to help him study for the ministry, the pastor proposed to consider the request only afterthe war. Jousselin, who sought no reward for the risks that he took, treated all the Jewish children compassionately, whether or not their parents could pay. In June 1944, when the occupation authorities suspected him of helping several Jewish families who had disappeared from Paris, Jousselin fled the capital and moved to Cappy. After the liberation, he returned to Paris with the children of Cappy. He returned the children to their parents or, if the parents had perished after deportation to the east, handed them over to Jewish organizations in Paris. For many years after the war, he remained active in assisting refugees who had settled in France. On February 21, 1980, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Jean Jousselin as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Lauga●, Director of Religious Studies, Home for Mentally Challenged Children

Pastor Roland Leenhardt●

Leenhardt, Pastor Roland File 4444 Roland Leenhardt was the pastor of a Protestant church in Tence, a small town near Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. During the occupation, Tence was a center of French Resistance activity. Leenhardt, an active opponent of German policies in France, was a disciple of Pastor Louis Dallière● (q.v.). Leenhardt orchestrated the rescue of Jews in Tence, and, in his Sunday sermons, at risk to his life, Leenhardt publicly condemned German atrocities and preached brotherly love and prevention of unnecessary bloodshed. André Chouraqui, a Jewish activist in the rescue of Jews in this area, described Pastor Leenhardt’s courageous deeds in his book L’amour fort comme la mort (Love is as strong as death). Thanks to Leenhardt’s activities, many Jews found shelter and refuge in Tence, particularly Jewish children who were transferred there by various rescue movements. Chouraqui himself, after fleeing from the Clermont-Ferrand area, turned to him for help. In certain cases, Leenhardt equipped Jewish refugees with false identity cards. He arranged forged papers and hiding places for the Weill family. In order to make it difficult to find the Weills, he hid the parents and children in different locations. On the day before Passover 1943, Leenhardt asked M. Weill to prepare a large quantity of matza (unleavened bread). Leenhardt distributed the matza among Jewish children sheltered with French families in the vicinity of Tence. On December 19, 1991, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Roland Leenhardt as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Jean Severin Lemaire●, Marseilles, France, Pastor of the Evangelist Congregation in Marseilles

Lemaire, Pastor Jean Séverin File 1039 Pastor Jean Séverin Lemaire was pastor of the Evangelist congregation in Marseilles and a lecturer in Bible. As an intellectual and a pious Christian, he refused to acquiesce to the persecution of Jews. In late 1941, after delivering a lecture to an audience in Marseilles, Lemaire made the acquaintance of Joseph Bass, a Russian-born Jew who had gone underground and established a rescue organization called Service André. Lemaire agreed to support Bass’s organization, which sought every means to save people persecuted by the Vichy government or by the Germans, including many Jews. Service André was active in the vicinity of Marseilles and along the Mediterranean coast. It drew activists of many faiths, all of whom were aware of the risks they were taking. The organization helped rescue persecuted Jews. They sent some of them to other parts of France, such as the Haute-Loire département, where many Jews had found shelter in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. The inhabitants of this largely Protestant village were particularly sensitive to the issue of religious persecution and were willing to help its victims. They sent other fugitives abroad. On Sundays after services, Lemaire provided Jewish fugitives with forged papers and the addresses of non-Jews willing to shelter them. He placed Jewish children with Christian families or in institutions for Christian youth, and helped Jewish adults cross the border or go underground.

On March 14, 1943, after an informer denounced them to the authorities, the Gestapo arrested Lemaire and Bass. Joseph Bass managed to escape. Pastor Lemaire, who had not wanted to go into hiding, was incarcerated in the same cell as the Jews in the Saint-Pierre prison. He bolstered their morale and prayed with them on Sabbath eve. Francine Weil, who was five years old at the time, remembered him as a tall rabbi with a black beard. Francine had been arrested with her grandparents, the Abravanels, andcontracted whooping cough. Thanks to Lemaire’s vigorous intervention, she was sent to the hospital, from which underground operatives removed her. Lemaire also protected a Jew who had been thrown into the Jewish cell and was suspected of being an informer. On April 5, 1944, Lemaire was deported to the Mauthausen camp; from there, he was transferred to Dachau, where he remained until liberated by the Americans.He also managed to rescue the 8 months old child of the Wigderbun family, from the prison in Marseille where 13 members of this family where held. None of the Jews detained in the cell survived. On February 19, 1976, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Jean Séverin Lemaire as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Raoul Lhermet●, Saint-André de Valborgne, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, Department of Haute-Loire

Lhermet, Pastor Raoul File 2698 l During the occupation, Protestant minister Raoul Lhermet was active in the French underground and participated in the management of Côteau Fleuri, a hostel in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the département of Haute-Loire. The hostel initially accommodated Jewish fugitives from French concentration camps and then members of the Resistance pursued by the Gestapo. Lhermet housed some of the fugitives in Côteau Fleuri and placed others with local peasants. He obtained ration cards and forged papers for anyone in need of them, using a rubber stamp from the municipality of Lussan (département of Gard), which he received from a fellow clergyman. Lhermet, a congenial man, established good relations with the gendarmes in Le Chambon, and his tenants felt safe even when the Germans searched the area for Jews. On one such occasion, when the Gestapo conducted searches dangerously close to the hostel, Lhermet sent the tenants to hide in the nearby forests. Jewish youngsters in the Collège de Cévenol, a boarding school in the town, were arrested and deported, but thanks to Lhermet’s vigilance and resourcefulness, the tenants of his hostel survived. As the German forays increased, the hostel became unsafe, and the refugees had to be moved out of town or out of the country, if possible. Lhermet organized many actions in which refugees were smuggled into Switzerland. This was extremely difficult. The trains were searched, and the border was closely guarded.

Nevertheless, most of these operations were successful. Among those whom Lhermet saved in this fashion were the Prinz family of Romania, the Wolf family of Germany, and the Vurgaft family of Paris. In 1943, Lhermet left Le Chambon and returned to his congregation in St. André-de-Valborgne, in the département of Gard. He remained active in the underground, hid the German Jewish Polie family in his home for two months, and later helped the Polies reach Switzerland. Lhermet risked his life to saveJews and other refugees. After the war, he moved to Nîmes and was decorated for his service in the underground. After his death, the municipality of Nîmes named a street for him. On January 17, 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Raoul Lhermet as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Liotard

Pastor Luigi, Camares, Gard

Pastor Henri Manen●, Chaplain, Les Milles detention camp, Aix-en-Provence (CIMADE), and wife Alice Manen●

Manen, Alice Manen, Pastor Henri File 3369 Reverend Manen was the pastor of the Protestant community of Aix-en-Provence. Hence, he was allowed free access to the Les Milles camp near the city in order to provide religious services for Protestant internees. He took advantage of this to remove many Jews by giving them false papers or baptism certificates. Utilizing his contacts in the government, the pastor managed to remove the names of Jewish invalids and veterans from the lists of people to be deported. Defying the risks that he ran, Henri Manen removed seventy-two children and eight adults from the camp. He and his wife Alice sheltered many of them in their home, while they were waiting to find a place of refuge. They sent several on to Pastor Donadille● (q.v.), who found them hiding places in the Plâteau Cévenol. The Ahfeld family, who had been hiding in Aix-en-Provence, had to flee when the police found their hiding place. Henri Manen took them in for several days before taking them personally to the Donadilles in St.-Privat-de-Vallongues, a village in the département of Lozère, where they lived until the liberation. In his diary, Pastor Manen expressed his anger and helplessness before the atrocities committed in the Les Milles camp between August 6 and September 10, 1942. Entire families, including young children, were packed into cattle cars and deported. On March 20, 1986, Yad Vashem recognized Henri and Alice Manen as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Gaston Charles Martin● and wife,

Simone Martin●, St. Germaine de Calberte (Lozère), Plateau Cévenol, south Central France

Pastor Jacques Martin● and wife,

Jacqueline Martin●, Ganges (Héralt), member Comité d’Inter-Mouvement Aupres des Evacués (CIMADE)

Martin, Jacqueline Martin, Pastor Jacques File 8122 The Protestant cleric Jacques Martin served in a congregation in Ganges (Herault). Before the war, Martin refused to do military service for reasons of conscience and was in prison for about a year. A military physician arranged his discharge in 1939 because of his poor health, but in accordance with its policy toward conscientious objectors, the Church would not assign him to a parish. He accepted the post of temporary pastor, without pay, in Ganges (Hérault). To support his family, Martin worked at a large needlework factory that turned out silk stockings. He and his wife joined CIMADE and collaborated with Madeleine Barot (q.v.), who placed them in touch with Jews who had been interned at Gurs. The Martins sent the inmates food parcels and helped several of them obtain their release and emigrate to destinations overseas. When arrests of Jews in the southern zone began, Pastor Martin and his wife played a central and active role in rescuing large numbers of Jews. They concealed Jews in their home for short periods while seeking permanent hideouts for them, usually with members of their congregation. Martin also forged identification cards, gave them to Jews in need, and participated in a network that filched ration cards and distributed them to sequestered Jews. The Martins concealed Jacques’ brother-in-law, Pastor André Trocmé● (q.v.), in their family home in Perdyer (Drôme). On June 22, 1944, the militia arrested Martin and had him imprisoned in Montpellier, on suspicion of activity in the Resistance.

In one of the strangest transactions of this troubled period, the Resistance negotiated his release in return for one thousand sheep, and Martin was freed three days before the liberation. After the liberation, the French general staff awarded Jacques Martin, the erstwhile conscientious objector, the esteemed Croix de Guerre for his feats “on behalf of the victims of enemy actions.” On June 22, 1998, YadVashem recognized Jacques and Jacqueline Martin as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Charles Monad● and

Madeleine Monod●, member of Protestant rescue network in Cannes

Monod, Pastor Charles Monod, Madeleine File 6958 Charles Monod was a Protestant minister who served in Cannes, which the Germans occupied on September 9, 1943. Pastor Monod, who belonged to a Protestant rescue network during the occupation, saved both Jews and non-Jews by providing certificates of baptism and forged identification cards. Sixteen-year-old Fuli Kas-Politansky and her mother arrived in Cannes after fleeing Marseilles, and the two went into hiding with Christian friends. With the help of forged papers that they received from Monod, they survived the occupation. Several decades later, Kas-Politansky’s son married a relative of Pastor Monod’s without knowing that Monod had helped his mother during the occupation. In another rescue action, Monod and his wife Madeleine sheltered Susanne Gossenheimer, a young Jewish woman from Germany. One day, the Germans arrested Monod and accused him of issuing forged certificates of baptism. Gossenheimer was bedridden with typhus just then. The Germans wanted to arrest her, too, but Madeleine Monod persuaded them not to because of her grave illness. Monod was tried and convicted in a French court. He and his wife never sought remuneration for their rescue actions, which were prompted solely by humane and religious motives. On January 7, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Charles Monod and his wife Madeleine as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Andre Morel●, Gurs detention center (1941-1942), Le Chambon-sur-Lignon (1943-1944)

Morel, Pastor André File 1288 Reverend André Morel was a Protestant minister who worked for CIMADE, a Protestant aid organization headed by Marc Bogner● (q.v.) and Madeleine Barot● (q.v.). In 1941-1942, Morel was active in the camp at Gurs. He provided Jewish inmates with false baptismal certificates, assisted in rescue operations, and participated in attempts to improve the prisoners’ living conditions. In 1942, CIMADE sent Morel to help smuggle Jews into Switzerland, a highly risky venture because of the difficult mountainous terrain and the many French soldiers who patrolled the area regularly to capture fleeing Jews and other opponents of the regime. Morel helped dozens of Jews run the border and neither sought nor received any remuneration. He was then transferred to Le Chambon sur Lignon (Haute Loire), where he operated in 1943-1944. Le Chambon and the surrounding villages were renowned for their active assistance in hiding Jews. Morel, in coordination with the Jewish organization OSE, located villagers willing to shelter Jews. André Chouraqui, coordinator of the local OSE team, later described Morel’s activities. Chouraqui entrusted Morel with twenty Jewish children, whom he saved by placing them in safe havens with village families. At one point, the French gendarmerie arrested and prosecuted Morel for smuggling Jews into Switzerland. Morel was convicted and fined 4,000 French francs, beyond the means of the young clergyman. Chouraqui came to his aid.

He appealed to the Jews of the region, who contributed willingly. On September 25, 1990, Yad Vashem recognized André Morel as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Henri Nick●,

son: Elie●;

Daughter-in-Law: Odile●

Nick, Pastor Henri File 4846a Henri Nick, pastor of the Protestant congregation of Fives, a working-class suburb of Lille (Nord), was very popular. Everyone called him “Monsieur Nick.” In 1942, at the age of seventy-four, Nick threw himself into intense activity to protect Jews. From his decades-long connections with many institutions and families in the area, he selected those willing to risk hiding Jewish children or entire families. He sheltered many Jews in his home until permanent hiding places were arranged. His son and daughter-in-law, Pierre● and Odile Nick● (q.v.), helped him by placing Jews with families in their village, Inchy. The pastor could be seen at all hours of every day, rushing through the streets on his old bicycle, vigorously pursuing his rescue activities on behalf of Jews. Although almost everyone in Fives knew what he was doing, he was so respected and admired that no one dared denounce him. On May 5, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Henri Nick as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Laurent Olives●,

Suzanne Olives●, Vérbon et Rousses

Olivès, Pastor Laurent Olivès, Suzanne File 6238c The Protestant minister Laurent Olivès was the pastor of the Protestant community of Ardailles (département of Gard). He joined the Resistance from the start and established a rescue network composed of members of his congregation and of other Protestant congregations in the Plateau Cévenol. His activities included finding homes and hiding places for Jewish refugees. He provided forged papers for his protegés and stayed in touch with them, ready to help whenever necessary. Renata Vascoboinic-Villain, a Jewish woman of Romanian origin born in Berlin, had married a French Huguenot, also born in Berlin, who joined the Foreign Legion. After the German invasion in 1940, Renata, who had just given birth to a son, Alain, fled to Montpellier, in the southern zone. In August 1942, when arrests of Jews in the south began, Olivès, who directed the Resistance in Soureilhade, protected Renata and her son. At first, the two fugitives lived in his home, but when this became too dangerous, the pastor moved them to a farm in Talayrac, where they stayed until the liberation. In a similar fashion, Olivès saved the Simon family, who were hiding in La Peyre de Peyregrosse. He provided them with forged papers, advice, and vital information. Symcha Szafran, a refugee from Belgium and the only survivor in his family, availed himself of his connections with Pastor Olivès, enabling him to find refuge with several peasant families in the département of Gard.

In all of their rescue actions, Olivès and his wife Suzanne were motivated solely by profound religious conviction. On May 6, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Laurent Olivès and his wife Suzanne as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Marcel Pasche●, Protestant Reformed Church, Roubaix (Nord)

Pasche, Pastor Marcel File 5315a The Reverend Marcel Pasche of Roubaix (Nord) was the pastor of the local Protestant Reformed Church and a member of a Protestant network that rescued persons persecuted by the Nazis and Vichy regime. With Pasche’s assistance, Joseph Winischki and his son Léo, German Jewish refugees, crossed into Switzerland in July 1942, at the time of massive arrests of Jews. Pastor Pasche worked closely with Léon Coghe (q.v.), a policeman who concealed the five Winischki children in various places in Roubaix. Pasche, who arranged the border-crossings for M. Winischki and his son, also prepared an escape plan for the mother, Sonia, and her two daughters, Inge and Baerbel. However, the attempt failed, and the three returned to Roubaix. Pasche and Coghe continued to look after them until the liberation. Pasche enrolled ten-year old Inge Winischki in a boarding school in Lille, called Lycée Fénelon, and thus her studies were uninterrupted during the occupation. On June 3, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Marcel Pasche as Righteous Among the Nations.

Evangelina Pean-Pages●

Pastor Edmond and Marie Peloux●, St. Jean-du-Gard, Department of Gard, Plateau Chevenol

Peloux, Pastor Edmond File 2698e The Protestant minister Edmond Peloux served in St.-Jean-du-Gard, in the département of Gard, and helped make the Plateau Cévenol, the hilly region in which he lived, a safe refuge for many scores of fugitives from the Vichy regime, most of them Jews. He urged his congregation to help people in distress and hide them from the security forces. Peloux found peasant families willing to shelter Jews. Along with his fellow clergymen, Roland Pollex● (q.v.) and Elie Brée● (q.v.), Pelloux assumed full responsibility for two children of the Lazarsfeld family, Jewish refugees from Austria, and placed them with foster families who saw to all their needs from December 1942 until the liberation. Peloux helped other Jews find shelter in the area. On January 5, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized the Reverend Edmond Peloux as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Poivre

Pastor Roland Polex●, St. Jean-du-Gard, Department of Gard, Plateau Cévenol

Pollex, Pastor Roland File 2698d The Protestant minister Roland Pollex served in St.-Jean-du-Gard, in the département of Gard, and helped make the Plateau Cévenol, the hilly region in which he lived, a safe refuge for many scores of fugitives from the Vichy regime, most of them Jews. He urged his congregation to help people in distress and hide them from the security forces. Pollex found peasant families willing to shelter Jews. Along with his fellow clergymen, Edmond Peloux● (q.v.) and Elie Brée● (q.v.), Pollex assumed full responsibility for two children of the Lazarsfeld family, Jewish refugees from Austria, and placed them with foster families who saw to all their needs from December 1942 until the liberation. Pollex helped other Jews find shelter in the area. On January 5, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized the Reverend Roland Pollex as Righteous Among the Nations

Pastor Roland de Pury●, Lyon

Pastor André de Robert

Pastor Frank Robert●, Meyrueis (Department of Lozère), Plateau Cévenol

Robert, Pastor Franck File 2698g The Protestant minister Franck Robert served in Meyrueis, in the département of Lozère, and helped make the Plateau Cévenol, the hilly region where he lived, a safe refuge for many scores of fugitives from the Vichy regime, most of whom were Jews. He preached to his congregation about the need to help people in distress and hide them from the security forces’ searching eyes. Robert located peasant families that agreed to hide Jews and he provided the fugitives with forged papers and hid them in his home until he could place them in permanent hiding places. He helped save the Lazarsfeld children in this fashion, providing forged papers and referring them to his colleague, the Reverend Robert Joseph● (q.v.), in the village of Clarensac. On January 5, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Franck Robert as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Henri Roser●, Prague, Czechoslovakia

Roser, Pastor Henri File 1027 Before World War II, the Protestant pastor Henri Roser belonged to a Christian pacifist group. At a meeting of the group in Prague, Roser met its secretary, Heinrich Totsch, whose wife was Jewish, and Totsch’s brother-in-law Gustav Fried, his wife Ahouva, and their young daughter, all from Prague. Several days after the Germans entered Prague in March 1939, Ahouva Fried decided to travel to Paris with her daughter and stay with her sister Frieda until the crisis blew over. Gustav remained in Prague, believing that the German invasion would pass quickly and that there was no reason to panic. He was deported and killed. On July 16, 1942, the day of the great roundup of Jews in Paris, French gendarmes stopped in the apartment building where Ahouva Fried was living with her daughter, sister, and brother-in-law. The concierge warned Fried and allowed her to hide, along with her daughter and brother-in-law, in another apartment in the building. He told the gendarmes that she was not at home. Fried’s position was precarious after the great roundup, because she lacked French papers and the gendarmes might return. Henri Roser remembered the family of his friends from Prague and knew that as Jews they needed assistance. Roser arranged ration cards for each family member and provided forged identification cards. This was both difficult and dangerous. The pastor took great risks, especially because he did not hide his views and was particularly vulnerable.

The documents that he obtained for Ahuva Fried were so well made that she could circulate freely in occupied Paris and, eventually, rent an apartment without arousing suspicion. Reverend Roser frequently visited Fried and her daughter to see how they were faring and to offer help. Although he was not affluent and had to support a sickly wife and two small sons, Roser never asked for any material reward. Ahouva Fried corresponded with Roser after the war, even when she left France forIsrael. On March 18, 1976, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Henri Roser as Righteous Among the Nations.

Viviane Roullet● (Sister)

Annette Matter● (Sister)

Matter, Annette (Sister) Roullet, Viviane (Sister) File 5702 During the great roundup of Jews in Paris in July 1942, twenty-three-year-old Suzanne Grynszpan, born in Poland, was away from home. Her mother and two of her sisters were arrested, and Grynszpan knew she must find a hiding place at once. On the advice of friends, she contacted Pastor Lauga, director of religious studies at a home for mentally handicapped children administered by the Deaconess sisters. They agreed to hide Grynszpan and gave her the status of a nursing student and counselor, like the other women in their seminary. Since she worked with the children, Grynszpan did not have to pay for room and board. She posed as a Christian and attended services. Only the director of the facility, Sister Annette Matter and Sister Viviane Roullet, her assistant, knew she was Jewish. From July 1942 until the spring of 1944, Grynszpan lived in the institution and only ventured outside for essential errands, dressed in the uniform of a student nurse, a dark robe and a novice’s wimple. Sister Matter’s material and spiritual assistance made her feel safe and at ease. In the spring of 1944 Grynszpan was certified as a nurse qualified to treat handicapped children, and Sister Annette suggested that she take a job at an infant-care center in an outlying suburb of Paris, where she would be sheltered from frequent inspection by the occupation authorities, constantly in search of hidden Jews. Under the name of Reine Lucas, Suzanne Grynszpan worked in that center until the liberation.

On March 18, 1993, Yad Vashem recognized Sister Annette Matter and Sister Viviane Roullet as Righteous Among the Nations.

Olga St. Blancat-Baumgarten, Belfort, France, Captain of the Salvation Army

Pastor Roland Tartier● 

Madeleine Tartier●

Tartier, Pastor Roland Tartier, Madeleine File 4430 The Drillichs, a Jewish family from the Netherlands, had fled to France after the German invasion. In the winter of 1942, they were living in St.-Laurent-du-Pape, in the département of Ardèche. The Germans had already occupied southern France and the villagers knew that the family was Jewish. On December 15, 1942, Tartier, the village pastor, visited the Drillichs and warned them to go into hiding at once, because the authorities had begun deporting Jewish refugees from Holland, Belgium, and Luxemburg, and arrests were taking place in a village only eight kilometers away. Since the Drillichs did not know where to go, the pastor brought them to his house, and they spent the night in his attic. For the next two weeks, they slept in the attic and spent the day on the second floor. The pastor, whose home was accessible to everyone, incurred a great risk by taking in the Jewish family. He provided the Drillichs with forged identification cards, and then, though seriously ill with bronchitis, he cycled fifty kilometers on icy mountain roads to Privas, hoping to find a border runner. He was unable to find one and returned home empty-handed. The danger increased, and the refugees could not remain in the pastor’s house any longer, so he decided to send them to the département of Haute-Loire. Four of his parishioners helped the Drillichs put their suitcases on the train. The fugitives then traveled unaccompanied to St.-Sauveur-de-Montagut, where the Reverend Bonnet awaited them. From St.-Sauveur-de-Montagut, they migrated from place to place until they arrived at the village of Freycenet-de-St.-Jeures, where they spent the rest of the occupation. The Drillichs would never forget the generosity of the pastor and other clergymen, who devoted themselves to helping people whom they did not know. Pastor Tartier’s wife also helped Gertrude, a Jewish girl from Mannheim, who was rescued from the Gurs detention camp in thePyrénées after her mother perished there. After sheltering Gertrude in their home, Mme Tartier helped her relocate to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. On October 1, 1943, the Gestapo arrested Pastor Tartier and imprisoned him for about two months. Although he was released and spared deportation, his health was severely impaired by the ordeal. On October 26, 1989, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Tartier and his wife as Righteous Among the Nations.

Monsignor Pierre-Marie Theas●, Bishop of Montauban (Episcopal)

Pastor Edouard● and Mildred Theis●, director, College Cevenol, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, Department of Haute-Loire

Theis, Pastor Edouard Theis, Mildred File 2066 The Protestant minister Edouard Theis, whose sermons contained an anti-war message, was invited by his colleague, the Reverend André Trocmé● (q.v.), whose beliefs and views he shared, to run the newly founded Collège Cévenol in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the département of Haute-Loire. When France was occupied and the Vichy regime formed, the two clergymen urged their congregants to shelter persecuted Jews, “ the people of the Bible.” Le Chambon and the surrounding villages became a refuge unique in all of France; hundreds of Jewish refugees, children and entire families, were hidden in various institutions and homes until the liberation. Edouard Theis and his wife Mildred regularly kept Jewish families in their home until they could place them in permanent shelters, and they treated their wards warmly and with dignity. On August 16, 1942, Georges Lamirand, the Minister of Youth in the Vichy government, made an official visit to the town. Trocmé and Theis refused to preach in the church in his presence. A dozen students in the Collège Cévenol handed him a letter stating: “We insist on making it known to you that there are a number of Jews among us. If our comrades, whose only fault is that they were born in another religion, receive the order to submit to deportation, they will disobey those orders, and we will do our best to hide them.” Within two weeks of Lamirand’s visit, a large detachment of gendarmes equipped with police vans moved into Le Chambon and began to make systematic searches.

In church that Sunday, Trocmé and Theis urged the congregants to “do the will of God, not of men.” Theis later explained that he was obeying Deuteronomy 19:2-10, where God commands His people to create cities of refuge where an innocent man could find asylum: “so that innocent blood not be shed in the midst of your land, ... so blood [will not] be upon you.” After a few days of fruitless searches, the gendarmes left the townin frustration. In February 1943, Theis and Trocmé were arrested along with the teacher Roger Darcissac● (q.v.) and were interned for three weeks at the Saint-Paul d’Eyjeaux camp near Limoges. The camp commander pressured them to sign a commitment to obey all orders of the government and its agents, but they refused and were, nevertheless, released. Once released, Theis joined the underground, and participated in the CIMADE escape network to Switzerland. On July 15, 1981, Yad Vashem recognized the Reverend Edouard Theis and his wife Mildred as Righteous Among the Nations.

Louise Theis

Paul Tinel●, Saint-Germain-de-Calbert, Salvation Army

Annie Tinel●

Tinel, Annie Tinel, Paul File 3979 Majer Landau and his wife, Polish Jews, had immigrated to France in the 1920s. In October 1942, they and their only daughter were living in Palavas-les-Flots, in the département of Hérault. In November, when Germany extended its occupation to the southern zone, foreigners were ordered to leave the coastal area for the interior, eighty kilometers away. Majer Landau traveled by bus to St.-Germain-de-Calberte, in the département of Lozère. He arrived at eight o’clock at night, knowing no one. Someone approached him and asked, “Brother, do you need help?” It was Paul Tinel, the village tailor and an officer in the Salvation Army. After Landau told him he was Jewish, Tinel responded, “Come with us; we’ll arrange a place for you and your family.” Thus, Paul Tinel and his sister Annie took in Landau and his family. When Landau returned to the village with his wife and daughter, a tidy little house was waiting for them. The next morning, a basket of food was on their doorstep, with a small note from the village baker: “Leave your ration cards and you can buy as much bread as you want every day.” The house belonged to Paul Tinel. Electricity was provided via a cable from the home of two elderly sisters who lived nearby. Majer Landau became a woodcutter, and Sylvie, his daughter, renamed Landaux on her ration card, was enrolled in the village school. Landau’s wife, a trained midwife, worked in her profession in the village. In the spring of 1943, a local gendarme whose children Landau had delivered, warned her of a police order to arrest all refugees in the village.

Landau and her husband left the village after placing their daughter, Sylvie, in the home of Pastor Gaston-Charles Martin● (q.v.). After the war, Sylvie Landau recounted how Tinel the tailor, Morgues the teacher, and Martin the village pastor had vied to take care of her. Eventually, Paul and Annie Tinel gave the Landaus their own identification cards, with which they fledto Grenoble, in the Italian occupied zone. Eleven-year-old Sylvie insisted on seeing her mother. Paul Tinel risked taking her to Grenoble, introducing her as his niece. Mme Landau was nearly arrested one day when asked to present her identification card, because the policeman knew the real Annie Tinel and exclaimed, “Annie, how you’ve changed!” Fortunately, Mme Landau, having lived in the village for a year and a half, was well acquainted with local people and bantered with the policeman. Nevertheless, she and her husband were a hair’s breadth from arrest. On August 30, 1988, Yad Vashem recognized Paul and Annie Tinel as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Pierre Charles Toureille●, Lunel (Hérault), Marseilles, France; vice chairman Czech Aid Organization; vice president, Nîmes Committee (Comité de Nîmes), Chief Minister of Foreign Protestant Refugees in Southern France

Toureille, Pastor Pierre Charles File 813 During the occupation, the French clergyman Pierre Charles Toureille was posted to southern France as the chief minister of foreign Protestant refugees. Concurrently, he served as the deputy chairman of the Comité de Nîmes, a committee appointed by the Vichy government to coordinate the work of French and foreign humanitarian organizations and to advise the Government on foreign refugees, primarily Jews. Pastor Toureille helped many Jews. This assistance was necessarily secret and undocumented, so we know only of cases that came to light after the war. One of the people assisted by Toureille was Robert Papst, a Hungarian-born Jew who in 1942 had married a Protestant woman in France with Swiss nationality. He provided Robert Papst with a forged identification card in the name of Parlier and hired him as a member of his office staff in Lunel. In the course of 1943-1944, Gestapo agents visited the office to investigate the activities of the clergyman and his staff. Papst’s forged papers spared him from arrest, but Pastor Toureille was interrogated seven times and tortured by the Gestapo on suspicion of aiding Jews. The Sperbers were another Jewish couple whose lives were saved by virtue of Toureille’s assistance. Toureille attested falsely that they were Protestants and helped them find refuge in an abandoned house in the Alps in the département of Isère. In June 1943, when the Sperbers had a son, the pastor helped them cope with their desperate financial circumstances by regularly providing small sums of money and provisions.

On November 6, 1973, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Pierre Charles Toureille as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor André Trocmé, Le Chambon-sur-Lingnon, Cevenol Normal School, Department of Haute-Loire

Magda Trocme●

Trocmé, Pastor André Trocmé, Magda File 612 In the early 1930s, when Charles Guillon*, pastor of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the département of Haute-Loire, was elected mayor of the town, André Trocmé took over as pastor of the congregation. On June 23, 1940, after the armistice, Trocmé and his colleague, Edward Theis*, urged his congregants to resist using “the weapons of the spirit.” In so doing, they followed in the footsteps of Guillon. This policy and the high-mindedness of many congregants made Le Chambon and the surrounding villages a unique refuge in France, where many hundreds of Jews, children and entire families, survived the war. Magda, Trocmé’s wife, was actively involved in creating and maintaining this haven. With others, she located families willing to accommodate Jewish refugees and prepared the town’s many boarding schools for increased enrollment. Reverends Trocmé and Theis vigorously encouraged all these endeavors, which frustrated the regime’s anti-Jewish policies. Neither pressure from the authorities nor searches by security agents diminished the resolve of the Trocmés and their team, and their activity did not cease. On August 15, 1942, Trocmé vehemently articulated his opinions to Georges Lamirand, the Vichy Minister for Youth, on an official visit to the town. Several days later, gendarmes moved into Le Chambon to “purge” the town of its foregin alien residents. On August 30, the suspense peaked. Rumor had it that the pastor was about to be arrested.

In his overflowing church, Trocmé urged the congregants to “do the will of God, not of men” and stressed the importance of fulfilling the commandment in Deuteronomy 19:2-10 concerning sheltering the persecuted. There were no arrests that day, and the gendarmes were withdrawn from the town several days later, their mission an utter failure. In February 1943, Trocmé and two colleagues, Reverend Edouard Theis● and the teacher Roger Darcissac*, were arrested and interned at the Saint-Pauld’Eyjeaux camp near Limoges. They were held for three weeks, while the camp commander tried to pressure the pastors to sign a commitment to obey, but they did not succumb to the pressure. Upon their release, Theis joined the CIMADE and participated in the escape network to Switzerland. Trocmé, who was not in the best of health, joined the underground, and was able to keep the safe haven in Le Chambon and its vicinity operating smoothly. On January 5, 1971, Yad Vashem recognized the Reverend André Trocmé and on May 14, 1984 his wife, Magda, as Righteous Among the Nations.

Daniel Trocmé*, head, Maison des Roches (Children’s Home), Le Chambon-sur-Lingnon, France; son of André and Magda Trocmé●; deported and murdered in the Majdanek death camp

Trocmé, Daniel File 1037 Daniel Trocmé was born in 1912. He taught physics, chemistry and natural sciences at Les Roches, an old, prestigious Protestant boarding school in Verneuil, in the département of Eure. In 1941, his uncle, Pastor André Trocmé (recognized as Righteous in 1971), asked him to become the principal of Les Grillons, a boarding school for Jewish refugee children established by the American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers), in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. A determined and stern-looking man, Daniel Trocmé had sublimely humane traits. Jonathan Gali, who at age sixteen found shelter and work at Les Grillons, recalls a fascinating and profoundly cultivated person. “Daniel Trocmé never thought of himself. He was deeply conscientious. At night you might find the director working by a dim nightlight, repairing children’s shoes with bits of rubber tire". On winter mornings, Trocmé cooked soup in a large metal pot. Although suffering from heart disease, he loaded the soup for the pupils’ lunch onto a wheelbarrow and pushed it for two kilometers over a steep track. At bedtime, Trocmé read the youngsters stories, which he then discussed with them at length. After several months, Daniel Trocmé was offered to take the position of principal of the school of La Maison des Roches. There too he continued his rescue activity. On June 29, 1943, the Gestapo raided the school in search for Jewish students and the director. Trocmé was not on the grounds, because he had spent the night in Les Grillons.

Although he could have fled, he chose to return and joined his Jewish students. Under threat of the German submachine guns, Trocmé and eighteen of his students were imprisoned in the town of Moulins. During his confinement, Trocmé continued to show courage and determination, bolstering the spirits of the students interned with him. Trocmé was taken to the Gestapo headquarters in Moulins for interrogation and, when accused of protecting a Jewish sixteen-year-old, heexplained that he was only protecting the downtrodden. In August 1943, Trocmé was sent to the detention camp in Compiègne in France; from there he was deported to the camp of Dora. In the beginning of 1944 he was taken in a “transport of the sick” to Majdanek, where he died in April 1944 of exhaustion and sickness. He was just thirty-two-years old. On March 18, 1976, Yad Vashem recognized Daniel Trocmé as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Paul Tzaut

Pastor Paul Vergara●

Vergara, Pastor Paul Vergara, Marcelle File 3980 The Protestant minister Paul Vergara was the pastor of the Oratoire du Louvre in Paris. During the occupation, he and his wife Marcelle extended themselves without stinting to save Jews. They sheltered children temporarily in their home, referred others to safe hiding places, and provided forged identification cards, The pastor also mobilized his congregation to help. Daniel and Hanna Waksberg owed their lives to assistance provided by Marcelle Vergara. Daniel Waksberg, a Polish-born Jew who lived in Paris with his wife and two children, was captured on May 14, 1941, and interned in the Pithiviers detention camp. He took advantage of his position as camp postman to leave the camp on March 14, 1942, a few months before the massive deportations of Jews from the camp to Auschwitz. Hesitant to return to his own home, for fear of being arrested, he turned to a longstanding client, who generously agreed to leave his apartment and let the Waksbergs stay there. After the mass arrests of Jews in Paris in July 1942, Daniel Waksberg tried to escape to the southern zone with his family. The attempt failed, and they had to return to their hiding place that very day. The next morning, his daughter Hélène met her English teacher in the street and told her of their plight. The teacher sent the family to Pastor Vergara, knowing he was very active in rescue networks. He in turn spoke to the Béchards (q.v.), who, upon his request, rented an apartment in their name, in the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris, and obtained false papers.

The Waksbergs were thus able to live undisturbed until the liberation. On February 12, 1943, the pastor and his assistant, Marcelle Guillemot● (q.v.), distributed a circular to the congregation asking every member to report the next day to the offices of the UGIF (the government-sponsored Jewish umbrella organization) and volunteer to take a Jewish child on a one-day outing. The children’s parents had all been deported from Drancy to the east, and the children had been placed by the Gestapo in the UGIF homes until they, too, would be deported. The operation was well planned, and the sixty-three Jewish youngsters aged three through eighteen were not returned to the UGIF. Rather, they were first taken to Vergara’s community center and then hidden with foster parents from Vergara’s congregation. When the Gestapo discovered the rescue operation, it dispatched several agents to the community center on February 16. In an audacious and dramatic operation, Guillemot fled, and the Gestapo found the place empty. Marcelle Vergara was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, interned in the Fresnes prison, and released that Christmas. Paul Vergara and his wife orchestrated an operation that saved the lives of sixty-three Jewish children. After the liberation, a Jewish charity took charge of them. On August 30, 1988, Yad Vashem recognized Paul and Marcelle Vergara as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Vienny

Pastor Henricus Vullinghs●

Vullinghs, Henricus Jacob Father Henricus Vullinghs saved the lives of at least 43 Jewish refugees with the help of his co-workers in his Resistance cell. Vullinghs, the elderly pastor of Grubbenvorst, an almost entirely Catholic village, had already been active in the Resistance when this division of tasks was in the making. Up until then, he had helped French prisoners of war and downed Allied pilots. In the summer of 1942, just after the deportation of Jews from Amsterdam began, the first Jewish refugees arrived in Grubbenvorst. Henricus Vullinghs provided safe houses for all the Jews sent to him. Among the people instrumental in organizing their arrival were the Amsterdam journalist and Resistance worker Matthieu Smedts and two home economics teachers at the Van Deth School on Nieuwe Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, Cornelia Ouweleen* and Mies Hoefsmit*, both of whom had many Jewish students in their classes. They had chosen Grubbenvorst for their refugees more or less by coincidence. The journalist Smedts, however, was a close friend of Vullinghs from before the war. Another important source of incoming Jewish fugitives was the Westerweel* group. Eventually, Henricus Vullinghs became one of the most active representatives of the LO in Limburg, working alongside many others, including the curate Jean Slots. Vullinghs ensured that the Jews were able to find shelter with farmers in the area but did not always tell the hosts that the fugitives were Jewish. Once a local family knew that they had taken Jews into their home, the fugitives were usually allowed to stay.

Vullinghs arranged addresses in such nearby communities as America, Horst-Meterik, Broekhuizen, Broekhuizenvorst, Oirlo, and Sevenum. He was indefatigable and regularly visited the guests to check on their well-being. Early in May 1944, Father Vullinghs was arrested. He died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945. After the war, Ben Visser’s father, who had also been rescued by the pastor, wrote a Requiem Mass in hismemory. On November 14, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized Henricus Jacob Vullinghs as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Edgar Wasserfallen●, Viane, Tarn

Elise Wasserfallen●

Elise Edgar and Elise Wasserfallen and their two children lived in Lasalle (Gard) in France where Edgar was a pastor in the Reformed Church.

Wasserfallen, Edgar Wasserfallen, Elise Edgar and Elise Wasserfallen and their two children lived in Lasalle (Gard) in France where Edgar was a pastor in the Reformed Church. When war was declared, the couple, who were of Swiss nationality, could have returned to their homeland, but decided to stay. Pastor Wasserfallen thought that, “… it was the only thing I could do. How could I have continued to live if I had not fulfilled my duty?” The couple saved many Jews who were being hunted down and also helped the Resistance. The Rojtenberg family, Jews from Reims who had sought refuge in Nîmes at the time of the debacle, owed Pastor Wasserfallen their lives. In 1942, with the situation for Jews worsened, Jacques Rojtenberg, 17, his younger brother Roger, 11, his two older brothers who were 21 and 18, as well as his parents, asked for help from CIMADE, a Protestant aid organization for refugees. The two older sons were sent to Chambon-sur-Lignon and from there to Switzerland. Jacques, Roger and their parents were sent to Florac (Lozère) and lodged with farmers, until they could no longer be kept there. Jacques left to look for help. In Lasalle, he asked to see the pastor, who had hung a sign on the door of the presbytery: “Here live Swiss citizens placed under the protection of the Swiss Embassy…”. Jacques explained his tragic situation to him. Pastor Wasserfallen and his wife Elise immediately took in Roger and his mother and accommodated them for four months. The pastor placed Jacques with a family in his parish, the Souliers*, where he was literally adopted as a son.

His father was placed with cousins of the Souliers, and Roger was later accommodated by a Souliers daughter. Pastor Wasserfallen arranged for the mayor of Lasalle to have false papers made for the Rojtenbergs, and served as a “mailbox” for correspondence between the two older sons and their parents. In February 1944, following a denunciation, Jacques had to be quickly evacuated to the home of othermembers of the Soulier family. In spite of the serious risks involved, Pastor Wasserfallen personally accompanied him there by bus. On August 13, 2000, Yad Vashem recognized Edgar and Elise Wasserfallen as Righteous Among the Nations.

Pastor Charles Westphal●      

Denise Westphall●           

Charles Westphal was the pastor of the Protestant community in Grenoble (Isère), where he lived with his wife and six children.  

Westphal, Charles Westphal, Denise Under the Occupation, Charles Westphal was the pastor of the Protestant community in Grenoble (Isère), where he lived with his wife and six children. A renowned theologian and an eminent personality in French Protestantism before the war, he also managed an important Protestant magazine, Foi et Vie, in which he disseminated the writings and thoughts of Professor Karl Barth. Charles Westphal initiated a true revolution in the Protestant community’s attitude toward Judeo-Christian relations. During the Occupation, he made an important contribution to the elaboration of the Pomeyrol Theses, written in 1941 by an assembly of pastors to combat Nazism and antisemitism. Madeleine Barot*, a leader in CIMADE, a Protestant aid organization for refugees, also played an important role in it. Charles Westphal’s spiritual influence encouraged many Protestants to rescue Jews, especially on the Vivarais-Lignon plateau. The Westphals, who were very discrete about their own rescue operations, succeeded in having Imre Gomery, a Hungarian Jew destined for deportation, released from the Rivesaltes camp. While awaiting his release, his wife received “comfort and hope” from the Westphals. The couple continued to help them by supplying food parcels. Simon Feigelson, an 18-year-old Jew who had fled to Grenoble with his family, received his conscription notice from the Forced Labor Service (STO) in September 1943. He decided not to show up and was being sought by the authorities.

Pastor Westphal offered to hide him. Denise Westphal worked miracles to feed all her wards, as there was another group of Jewish fugitives hidden in the maid’s room. Claude, one of their daughters, carried the meals upstairs to them. The Westphals took enormous risks because their position was known to the public and because the French police and Gestapo dealt harshly with anyone involved in the rescue of Jews, especially after the withdrawal of Italian troops from the regionin September 1943. For the rest of his life, Pastor Charles Westphal worked tirelessly to bring Jews and Christians together. On April 13, 2004, Yad Vashem recognized Charles and Denise Westphal as Righteous Among the Nations.

Czech Aid; Committee for Aid of Czech Refugees

(Centre d’Aide Tschécoslovaque; Secours Tchèque), Marseilles, France, see also YMCA, Marseilles, France (Fry, 1945; Gutman, 2003; Lowrie, 1963; Marino, 1999; Ryan, 1996, pp. 148-149, 152, 167, 216)

Opened after the Nazis closed the Czech Aid office in Marseilles.  Vichy allowed the office to function.  It served as a front organization to rescue and aid Czech refugees in the Marseilles area.  Headed by “Thurmond” (alias) and “DuPont” (alias).  Affiliated with YMCA office in Marseilles.  Established refugee centers at Château de la Blancherie, Lapeyre, and La Blancherie, near Marseilles, for Czech soldiers, refugees and children.  Founded children’s center called Christian Home for Children, near Nice. Dr. Donald Lowrie (alias “DuPont”), head YMCA, was leader of the Nîmes Committee. Pastor Pierre CharlesToureille was his important second in command. The Nimes Committee was comprised of a least 25 rescue and relief organizations.

Dr. Donald Lowrie Czech Aid, Committee for Aid of Czech Refugees (alias “DuPont”), head YMCA, head Nîmes Committee (USA), (Fry, 1945; Lowrie, 1963; Subak 1945)

Helen Lowrie (USA), YMCA, wife of Donald Lowrie, (Lowrie, 1963)

Vratislav Stula , Czech Aid, Committee for Aid of Czech Refugees. Alias “Thurmond” the assistant director of Czech Aid (Centre d'Aide Tchécoslovaque), assistant to Donald Lowrie, member of the Nimes Committee, World Service of the Young Men’s/Women’s Christian Association (YMCA/YWCA), Marseilles office,

Upon arrival at Aix-Marsielle in August 1939, Stula engaged in military and paramilitary activities due to the imminent war with Germany. Prior to his university studies, he received military training, joining the volunteer Czech Brigade of the French Army (L'Armée Tchécoslovaque en France) on 2 September 1939. On 1 December 1939, Stula was called to active duty, beginning his formal army combat training at the Agde, Herault, military camp. He served as an infantry corporal in military campaigns fighting against Germany during the spring and early summer of 1940. Six months later, following the Battle of France and the second French-German Compiègne armistice on 22 June 1940, Stula was officially demobilized from army service on 26 June 1940.

Joining an underground unit of the Free French Forces in June 1941, Stula served as a covert combat member of the French Resistance Movement (La Resistance) through 1945. Thanks to the cooperation of the Aix-Marseilles University officials, he was able to obtain two addresses, a covert alias, and dual identity papers to maintain his status as a student while also working as a soldier for the underground resistance.

Stula was also working as the assistant director of Czech Aid (Centre d'Aide Tchécoslovaque)—a part of the original Nimes Committee and the only remaining Czechoslovak organization in existence during WWII in unoccupied (Vichy) France—to provide assistance to hundreds of demobilized Czech and other refugees. Under the auspices of the Czech Aid refugee program, he worked under false identity papers, using the alias “Mr. Thurmond” before the Gestapo raid (see below), in securing shelter, support and food for refugees (including Jews) and allied soldiers. As a covert Czech Aid official, Stula was also able to successfully direct the underground Network Service of the Free French Forces for his sector of Vichy France. In 1943, the Gestapo raided the offices of the Marseilles Centre d'Aide Tchécoslovaque. They interrogated “Mr. Thurmond” and threatened to execute his family, but Stula narrowly escaped by convincing them that he was just a student and by speaking superb French. The Gestapo later realized their mistake, issuing a warrant for Stula’s arrest with a 50,000 franc reward on his head, and subsequently closed the Czech Aid organization.

However, Stula was able to continue his work for Czech Aid, using a new alias, “Mr. Montagnon,” but now in a covert, underground capacity. Lowrie summarizes Stula's single-handed efforts to re-establish the Czech Aid rescue operations, after the Gestapo raid, in the following The Hunted Children passage: “Thurmond (Stula) had persuaded the French postal officials to permit him, against all (Vichy) regulations, to copy the lists of earlier Czech Aid payments and was thus able to reconstitute those files, so that the Czechs never missed a month's payment of allowances."

The reconstituted accounts were delivered to Lowrie in Geneva, and under his direction, the original French accountant was able to continue auditing Czech Aid records, thanks to the young two men, "Thurmond and "Dupont" covert operations. Through additional underground negotiations, Stula, Slavomir Brazk and Pastor Toureille successfully established a new covert committee to aid refugees and fallen allied soldiers. From exile in Geneva, Dr. Lowrie was able to secure 20,000 francs per month for the new “committee” from Hugo Cedergren in Stockholm. The funds were filtered through Foreign Office officials in Vichy and delivered to the committee through the “black market” channels. Thanks to these funds, Stula and Brazk could continue at great personal risk, practically all Czech Aid relief services previously under the guidance of the Nîmes Committee. The funds helped save children, families and refugees, including allied soldiers, until the end of the war.

Following the war, Stula was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille de la Resistance, and was recognized for his active military service by General Charles De Gaulle. The following passage summarizes General De Gaulle’s letter to Stula, acknowledging his WWII resistance missions:

“To the order of the Army Corps Corporal Chief Vratislav Stula, in the mission of the D.G.E.R., has during the past three years and four months, directed the Network Service of his sector. He has accomplished personally, against any danger, dangerous missions. After having fallen three times into the claws of the Gestapo, he succeeded, thanks to his cold blood, to mislead and confuse their research and as soon as he was set free, he alerted the network of possible danger. He was able to save numerous lives thanks to his courage, spirit, and his initiative by organizing their fleet to abroad.” Signed by De Gaulle, 4 September 1945.

In addition to General De Gaulle’s awards and commendations, Stula received letters and awards from the Czech Foreign Minister in exile, Jan Masaryk Jr, while he resided in Paris, and from the President of the International Committee YMCA in Paris, Donald A. Lowrie, each acknowledging Stula’s remarkable missions and courageous war efforts, conducted in a selfless manner. (Czechoslovakia; Lowrie, 1963)

Slavomir Brzak, Czech Aid, Committee for Aid of Czech Refugees (Lowrie, 1963)

Pastor Toureille●, Pastor Pierre CharlesToureille was his important second in command of the Nimes Committee which was comprised of a least 25 rescue and relief organizations. (France; Lowrie, 1963)

Toureille, Pastor Pierre Charles File 813 During the occupation, the French clergyman Pierre Charles Toureille was posted to southern France as the chief minister of foreign Protestant refugees. Concurrently, he served as the deputy chairman of the Comité de Nîmes, a committee appointed by the Vichy government to coordinate the work of French and foreign humanitarian organizations and to advise the Government on foreign refugees, primarily Jews. Pastor Toureille helped many Jews. This assistance was necessarily secret and undocumented, so we know only of cases that came to light after the war. One of the people assisted by Toureille was Robert Papst, a Hungarian-born Jew who in 1942 had married a Protestant woman in France with Swiss nationality. He provided Robert Papst with a forged identification card in the name of Parlier and hired him as a member of his office staff in Lunel. In the course of 1943-1944, Gestapo agents visited the office to investigate the activities of the clergyman and his staff. Papst’s forged papers spared him from arrest, but Pastor Toureille was interrogated seven times and tortured by the Gestapo on suspicion of aiding Jews. The Sperbers were another Jewish couple whose lives were saved by virtue of Toureille’s assistance. Toureille attested falsely that they were Protestants and helped them find refuge in an abandoned house in the Alps in the département of Isère. In June 1943, when the Sperbers had a son, the pastor helped them cope with their desperate financial circumstances by regularly providing small sums of money and provisions.

On November 6, 1973, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Pierre Charles Toureille as Righteous Among the Nations.

Vladimir Vochoc● Czech diplomat, arrested and escaped

Vochoc, Vladimir Vladimir Vochoc had served in the Foreign Ministry of Czechoslovakia since the state was established following World War I. A lawyer by training, Vochoc served in different positions and by 1938 was his country’s consul in Marseilles. Following the Munich Agreement and the subsequent partition of Czechoslovakia, a government in exile was formed that resided first in France and then, following the German invasion of France, in London. The diplomatic delegations in the occupied countries ceased to exist. Although he no longer had any diplomatic status or immunity, Vochoc returned to the abandoned consulate in July 1940 and began issuing passports to the many refugees who were stranded in southern France, frantically trying to leave the country. Among these refugees were many Jews who had escaped from Germany and needed papers to be able to receive exit permits and visas. Vochoc found a limited number of regular empty passports in the consulate safe, as well as several hundred so called “pink passports,” which had only limited validity, to which he added a document that extended it. He began issuing the documents to both former Czechoslovak citizens and to people without any connection to Czechoslovakia. He soon ran out of documents and had copies printed by a local printing shop. Varian Fry (recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 1994), who was active in Marseille on behalf of the American Emergency Rescue Committee, worked with Vochoc Many refugees, including Jews, benefited from his help.

In March 1941 the French police arrested Vochoc. The reason for his arrest is unknown, but he managed to escape and reach Lisbon a few months later. In January 1943 he addressed a report to the government in exile, describing his activity. This report shows that Vochoc had acted independently and not on behalf of his government. He said, “I’m taking the liberty of stating with certainty that during the said period, in the years 1940–1941 in Marseilles, I acted to save foreign nationals even if I did not have the assurance that I had the backing of my foreign ministry, and even if it was not initially the policy of the Czechoslovak government.” After World War II ended, Vochoc returned home and continued to serve in the diplomatic service. In 1948 he was arrested and sentenced to thirteen years prison in a show trial in 1953. He was released after seven years, living penniless until his death in 1984 at the age of 91. On February 2, 2016, Yad Vashem recognized Dr. Vladimir Vochoc as Righteous Among the Nations.

Joseph Fisera, (Lowrie, 1963)

Chapter 24: Czech Aid Under the Occupation, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

In Marseilles it took the occupying Germans nearly a month to turn their attention to the Czech Aid. Early in the morning on December 3, 1942, they occupied our offices, arresting all personnel as they came to work. A neighbor warned one of the younger leaders before he left his room and he succeeded in alerting one other, the first assistant to the director. This man, one of whose half dozen identity cards read "Dupont," took over the leadership of Czech Aid.

Although hunted by the Gestapo for almost three years after they had entered Marseilles, Dupont was able to elude their clutches, largely because of his perfect alibi. Early in the war, a French friend of his had fallen in battle, and the young man's parents, deliberately neglecting to report his (p. 242) death to French authorities, turned over to Dupont their son's identity papers. By good fortune the young Frenchman had almost exactly the same build and coloring as Dupont. Having thus become a Frenchman (equipped with documents proving he had recently returned from a German war prisoner camp) Dupont could live without being challenged, at least until the Germans began to impress all young men into work groups. He was even able, on demand, to present documents (genuine) proving that all four of his grandparents were Aryan.

Thanks to the collaboration of officials in the University of Aix, where he had been a student, our other young Czech leader (he was just twenty) was able to change his identity papers, and throughout the rest of the war ably seconded Dupont under the name of Thurmond. All remaining staff members were seized and transported first to a Paris prison, where for weeks our friends could supply them with food parcels, and thence to concentration camps in the Reich. The Jewish members of the staff were never heard of afterward. Of the others, one died in a German camp, but the rest, terribly scarred by their experiences, lived through years of incarceration and returned to France after V-E Day.

Faced with constantly increasing danger, Dupont and Thurmond were able to maintain practically all the Czech Aid operations almost uninterrupted. For some months they worked out of the YMCA office in the rue Pytheas, aided by the French staff that was left. The YMCA had a good reputation with the Germans because of its world-wide services to war prisoners in Britain, America and India, and nothing in our Marseilles files would reveal any anti-German activity But one day the Gestapo raided this office, incidentally giving Thurmond the narrowest escape of all those exciting years. As usual, the Gestapo broke into the office in the early morning. As each person, staff or caller, entered, a Nazi, revolver in hand, would take him to a back room, search his pockets, and warn him to remain silent and out of sight. (p. 243)

Among the early visitors that morning was Thurmond. Taking in the situation at first glance, he began at once to protest that he was a simple French student, come in to pick up some textbooks. Since our offices were always full of books, en route to or from the camps, this sounded plausible.

"What kind of books?"

The day before, Thurmond had laid out two books on agriculture, to be sent to the Lapeyre farm. "Books on agriculture," he told them. "I think they might be left for me on that desk."

"What do you know about this organization?" they demanded. Thurmond said he thought it must be a good institution since it supplied books to poor students.

The Germans had one Frenchman with them, and they turned the young Czech over to him for grilling. Fortunately Thurmond had graduated from the French Lycée in Prague before he came to the University of Aix. It is no small tribute to his command of the French language, as well as to his talent as an actor, that after a half hour of his sometimes tearful protests the Germans were convinced. They noted his name and address (both false), warned him of reprisals against his family if he told anyone of his arrest, and finally let him go. Thurmond at once alerted the remaining YMCA staff and posted a concealed guard to warn off any other visitors to the office.

When the Nazis got around to ransacking our office, a few hours later, they found some papers indicating that the frightened French student might have been who he really was, and from then on both Thurmond and Dupont worked with the knowledge that the Germans had offered a reward of 50,000 francs for information leading to their capture.

With both offices closed, the two young Czechs had to rely on helpful friends in Marseilles and across southern France. They rented a room in the house of a Czech workman in a Marseilles suburb to serve as headquarters for continuing operations. (p. 244)

Fortunately our faithful friends in the government apparatus in Vichy, principally in the Foreign Office, continued their support. After the closure of the Marseilles Czech Aid headquarters, a "Czech Office" was set up by "Foreign Affairs" to replace the consular functions the Czech Aid had carried. There was little of that type of work to do ( our own men could and did fabricate almost any kind of document needed), but the new Czech agency served another useful purpose. It took possession of the Marseilles office and property of Czech Aid and turned them over, just as they had been put under seal by the Gestapo, to Dupont and the others who continued the work.

A paragraph from one of Dupont's reports at the end of 1943 tells the story: "Since the 'Office' offered only juridical and not material help, the 'Comite d' Assistance aux Refugies Tcheques' is proposed. This is supposed to be a private organization of seven people, friends of Czechoslovakia, which would conduct the social work hitherto done by the Centre d'Aide. It must be explained that officially the French know nothing of the fact that, although its property and offices were confiscated by the Gestapo, the Centre d' Aide still continues to function, underground. Vichy is insisting on the organization of this Committee for Aid of Czech Refugees, hence we shall have to comply with their suggestion. Since the lists of those helped by this Committee would be available to the Germans, we will take care that only those persons appear in the books who are too old or too ill to be in danger of being sent to Germany. We shall continue to care for all the others, as hitherto, in secret." Thurmond had persuaded the French postal officials to permit him, against all regulations, to copy the lists of earlier Czech Aid payments and was thus able to reconstitute those files, so that the Czechs never missed a month's payment of allowances.

The French accountant who, under my direction, had always audited the Czech Aid records, continued to do this with the accounts the two young men presented to him. All (p. 245) concerned, both the Czech government in London and we in Geneva, were amazed, once the war was ended, to receive a complete accounting for all Czech Aid financial operations right up to the date of the armistice.

The de facto Czechoslovak Minister in Geneva, Dr. Kopecky, was one of the most capable diplomats I ever encountered. He had been the Czechoslovak delegate to the League of Nations and had continued to live in Geneva after the collapse of that Wilsonian ideal, as official representative of the Czechoslovak Red Cross with the League of Red Cross Societies. Even after the Czechoslovak Republic had been crushed by the Nazi occupation, and despite German protests to the Swiss government, Dr. Kopecky maintained his office and full diplomatic privileges: an official car and the right to use the Czechoslovak language over the telephone. He was our only direct contact with President Benes and the Czechoslovak government in London. From them he received funds to supplement what the American Friends of Czechoslovakia were sending me from New York. Money could be cabled. to Switzerland; the problem was getting it into France.

This was sometimes effected by Monsieur Bertrand as he passed back and forth. Once Dupont came with him to Geneva. He had lost part of one trouser leg in getting his six-foot-four frame through the barbed wire at the frontier. It was not difficult to provide new pants, but for a pair of shoes large enough to replace his outworn footwear we had to scour the shoe stores in both Geneva and Berne. After Bertrand's arrest, Dupont visited me in Geneva a second time. On this trip he used another route, where there was no wire, but was somewhat concerned lest his enormous footprints in the snow might indicate to German border guards who had passed there.

Dupont told me how the Marseilles post office had agreed to deliver all mail addressed to the Czech Aid to the YMCA office and, after that was closed, to the secret headquarters outside town. Besides this, he had arranged postboxes in other (p. 246) villages. To one of these I had been instructed to send mail addressed to "Jean Montagnon." "Who is this Montagnon?" I asked Dupont.

"Oh, there are three of us," he explained, "each with an identity card in that name. In case anything should happen to one of us, another could receive the mail."

The closest call in Dupont's years of underground service to his fell ow countrymen came one day when he was visiting the farm headquarters at Lapeyre. After our Nimes Committee vice-president had lost that briefcase in the train, there were house searches as a result, but it took the Gestapo four months to discover Lapeyre. One night French neighbors reported that three cars "powered with gasoline" were prowling around the countryside: these could only belong to Germans. Hiding his bulging brief case under a dog asleep in his kennel, Dupont and most of the other men left the house before dawn, retiring to the surrounding woods . The Germans took away two Jews who had come to the farm too late to be provided with the Bishop's "Orthodox" certificates. Then the visitors discovered the hidden brief case with some of the counterfeit seals and stamps used in forging documents, together with all four of Dupont's identity cards, each bearing his photograph. Although they combed that region for days, Dupont's photo in hand, the Germans failed to catch him. If they had looked for a six-footer, the story might have been different, for Dupont was the tallest man in the province. Another reason for his escape was that Lapeyre lay at a point where three Gestapo administrative regions met, and Dupont moved over into another of our farms, a few miles away but in another region, where the police of that area never got around to searching for him.

After that German raid in Lapeyre, most of the Czech farmers not already away with the French underground lived with various of their neighbors, as did the director of the farms himself. Thus the farms could continue to operate under the disintegrating German control until American forces from (p. 247) the west rolled up over the Correze.

The children's colony at Vence ultimately had to move. When all of France was occupied, the southeast corner was taken by Italian troops instead of Germans. The Italians had no reason to dislike Czechs, and although they sometimes came up to see the children they made no move to interfere with the school's normal operation.

Even after the Germans took over, they did not disturb the children at Vence for several months. Then one day two German officers came and inspected the colony. They talked in German about what a pleasant place this would be for the General's residence. Vence was a village of artists; it had a marvelous view over the Mediterranean, and "look how well these Czechs are eating."

So the school's director was not surprised, a few days later, to receive a German army order to evacuate the school, "since it was needed for military purposes." Much earlier, when we were just starting the Czech Aid, one of our compatriots had offered us the use of his chateau in the Creuse Department. At that time we could think of no use for it because it was too far off the main roads. The place was still available, and now it was decided to move the Vence project there.

Children and parents and cows and rabbits and hens, plus farm equipment and kindergarten furniture had to be moved three hundred miles to the northwest. At this time railroad transportation in France was nearly paralyzed, as Allied bombing destroyed more and more railroad material in Germany. But even the Germans couldn't put a hundred children out on the street. Since the General evidently liked the idea of living at Vence, it wasn't too difficult for us to get the railroad cars we needed. We moved everything we had in Vence, and we never lost a child or a cow.

And the colony's life flowed on, its only serious difficulties those of all of France in the last throes of the war. Most of the Vence children were not orphans, as were the majority of (p.248) those in hiding, so after the end of the war they could rejoin their parents, and the Vence colony became only a pleasant memory.

Because we had planned the farms as one enterprise, the Czechs had less difficulty with food than most people in southern France. Registered as farmers, and because of their cordial relations with the French population, most of the men -and there were more than two hundred-on our eight farms continued working their land until that part of France was liberated by American forces and they could participate openly in the final rout of Hitler's armies. With the disappearance of the demarcation line, contact with northern France became possible, and several more camps were added to the list of those our farms were already serving with monthly food shipments. The crowded farmhouses also sheltered scores of Czechs who escaped from the German-controlled work gangs.

When the war was over, the lessors of our farms received back hundreds more acres of tillable land than they had had for fifty years, and properties in much better shape.

[Lowrie, 1963, pp. 241-248]

Deffaught Rescue Network

Haute Savoie, France

Jean Deffaught●   mayor of Annemasse, founder and leader.

Deffaugt, Jean File 178 On May 31, 1944, a group of Jews trying to cross the border into Switzerland was apprehended near the town of Annemasse in Haute-Savoie. There were twenty-eight Jewish boys and girls in the group, aged four to sixteen, led by Marianne Cohn*, a young underground activist. The entire group was imprisoned in a wing of the Pax Hotel, which the Germans had converted into a prison. The mayor of Annemasse, Jean Deffaugt, had learned what had happened from his contacts with the underground. He went to the hotel and, after a long discussion, using courage and cunning, he managed to persuade the Gestapo commander to release the youngest children, those aged four to eleven. The Germans made the mayor promise to return them when ordered to do so. Thus, seventeen children were set free. Jean Deffaugt then set up a complex operation, thanks to which the children found a safe refuge. The mayor had made such a strong impression on the Gestapo commander that he gave him a permit allowing him access to the prison to see all the prisoners there. Before each visit, Deffaught collected food, medicines, blankets, and other vital necessities for the Jewish prisoners. He visited them before they were deported, fed them, bandaged their wounds, and comforted them as best he could. Deffaugt and his wife knew that they were also in danger with the occupation regime. After the war, he admitted it frankly, “I was afraid, I confess. I never went up the Gestapo steps without crossing myself or murmuring a prayer.”

Five boys and six girls remained in the Pax Hotel with Cohn. They could be seen walking together in the street every day en route to the various tasks their jailers had imposed. The Jewish underground network to which Marianne belonged made a plan to save her. A car would be waiting at the street corner while she was walking with the children. When the mayor told Cohn about the plan, she demurred. Was it not her mission to look after the children? How could she abandon them, knowing that the Germans were likely to take vengeance upon them for her escape. Aware that her chances of survival as a Jew were slim, she had told her interrogators courageously, “I have saved more than two hundred children, and if I am set free, I will continue to do so.” On the night of July 8, 1944, twenty-year-old Cohn was abducted from the prison and murdered by the French militia. Later that month, the Gestapo commander in Annemasse informed Deffaugt that the children had to “disappear” because the prison was overcrowded. Once again, Deffaugt managed to convince him to place the children in his charge, promising to return them if asked. On the last Sunday of July 1944, these children were taken to join the younger children. Annemasse was liberated on August 18, and all the Jewish children were relocated to Geneva, where they were sent to Jewish organizations who oversaw their rehabilitation. Twenty years afterward, Deffaugt was still in touch with most of the children, receiving moving letters from Alsace, England, and Israel. In their correspondence, the survivors often mentioned Marianne Cohn*, who had given her life for them. On October 19, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Jean Deffaugt as Righteous Among the Nations.

Marianne Cohn*

Five boys and six girls remained in the Pax Hotel with Cohn. They could be seen walking together in the street every day en route to the various tasks their jailers had imposed. The Jewish underground network to which Marianne belonged made a plan to save her. A car would be waiting at the street corner while she was walking with the children. When the mayor told Cohn about the plan, she demurred. Was it not her mission to look after the children? How could she abandon them, knowing that the Germans were likely to take vengeance upon them for her escape. Aware that her chances of survival as a Jew were slim, she had told her interrogators courageously, “I have saved more than two hundred children, and if I am set free, I will continue to do so.” On the night of July 8, 1944, twenty-year-old Cohn was abducted from the prison and murdered by the French militia. Later that month, the Gestapo commander in Annemasse informed Deffaugt that the children had to “disappear” because the prison was overcrowded. Once again, Deffaugt managed to convince him to place the children in his charge, promising to return them if asked. On the last Sunday of July 1944, these children were taken to join the younger children. Annemasse was liberated on August 18, and all the Jewish children were relocated to Geneva, where they were sent to Jewish organizations who oversaw their rehabilitation. Twenty years afterward, Deffaugt was still in touch with most of the children, receiving moving letters from Alsace, England, and Israel. In their correspondence, the survivors often mentioned Marianne Cohn*, who had given her life for them. On October 19, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Jean Deffaugt as Righteous Among the Nations.

DELASEM

(Aid Commission for Jewish Refugees; Delegazione Assistenza Emigranti; Delegation for the Assistance of Immigrants), Southern France, Rome, Italy, and Yugoslavia, established December 1939 under Unione delle Communitá Israelitche (Bauer, 1981; Carpi, 1994; Gutman, 2007, pp. 353, 367; Leboucher, 1969; Rayski, 2005), see also Jewish-Christian Aid Committee, Florence, Italy

DELASEM was an umbrella of several Jewish organizations both in France and in Italy.  It was founded in 1933.  In November 1939, DELASEM began operating as a relief and rescue organization.  It was headed by Vittorio Valobra and its secretary was Raffaele Cantoni.  It became a secret organization which, during the war years, operated in Italy, Yugoslavia and Southern France.  DELASEM also supported beleaguered Jews in these occupied areas.

During the war, it helped save thousands of Jews all over Europe.  In France and Italy, DELASEM was headed by Father Marie-Benoit●, a Capuchin monk.

DELASEM provided forged identity papers and ration cards.  More than 10,000 Jewish refugees were supported by DELASEM with money from the American Jewish Joint.  Prominent Jewish leaders of DELASEM included Vittorio Valobra (President), Settimio Sorani (Secretary), Angelo Donati, Aaron Kasztersztein, Rabbi Riccardo Pacifici, Stefan Schwamm, Dante Almasi, Enric Luzzato, Massimo Teglio and Francesco Repetto.

Father Marie-Benoit●, Head France, Italy

Benoît, Father Pierre-Marie File 201 Father Pierre-Marie Benoît, served as strecher-bearer in World War I. He followed in the footsteps of his uncle and became a priest. and until 1940 lived in the Capuchin monastery in Rome. When war between France and Italy was clearly inevitable, he returned to his homeland and moved into the Capuchin monastery in Marseilles. Deeply troubled by the Jewish laws enacted by the Vichy government, he resolved to devote himself to the protection of Jewish refugees. To do so he used every means at his dispolsal: contacts with passeurs (border guides), with the French underground, and with other religious organizations—Protestant, Greek Orthodox, and Jewish. Father Benoît procured false papers and smuggled refugees into Spain or Switzerland. His reputation as a man who spared no effort to save Jews spread far and wide. The waiting room in his monastery constantly teemed with people, and the printing press in the monastery’s basement printed thousands of false baptismal certificates for distribution to Jews. When, in November 1942, southern France was occupied and the Swiss and Spanish borders became harder to cross, Father Benoît began to organize the transfer of Jews to the Italian occupation zone. He met in Nice with Guido Lospinoso, the Italian commissioner of Jewish affairs, whom Mussolini had sent at the Germans’ insistence. Father Benoît persuaded Lospinoso to refrain from action against the 30,000 Jews who lived in Nice and the vicinity, though that had been the purpose of Lospinos’s trip.

In April 1943, he met with Pope Pius XII and presented a plan to transfer Jews in Nice to North Africa via Italy. This plan was foiled when the Germans occupied northern Italy and the Italian-occupied zone of France. When the Gestapo discovered Father Benoît’s activities, he was forced to move to Rome. Although he himself was now a refugee, he persevered in his rescue efforts with even greater fervor. Father Benoît was elected to theboard of Delasem (Delegazione Assistenza Emigranti Ebrei), the main Jewish welfare organization in Italy and when the Jewish president was arrested, Father Benoît was named the acting president. The organization’s meetings were held at the Capuchin monastery in Rome. Father Benoît contacted the Swiss, Romanian, Hungarian, and Spanish embassies, and obtained false documents that enabled Jews to circulate freely. Father Benoît also extracted numerous ration cards from the police on the pretext that they were meant for non-Jewish refugees. He saved the lives of a great many Jews, who regard him as the man who saved them from the crematoria. Father Benoit never attempted to convert the Jews under his care. Susan Zuccotti who wrote a book about him reports that one suvivor told her that father Benoit told her to "be a good Jewess", another couple said that the priest advised them "You are Jewish and you must remain Jewish". When Rome was liberated in June 1944, the Jewish community held an official synagogue ceremony in honor of Father Benoît and showered him with praise. Years later, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson delivered a moving speech in which he said that Father Benoit’s wonderful actions should inspire the American people in the protection and preservation of the rights of citizens, irrespective of race, color or religion. On April 26, 1966, Yad Vashem recognized Father Pierre-Marie Benoît as Righteous Among the Nations.

Angelo Donati, Nice, France, Italy (Jewish)

Douvaine Rescue/Escape Network, Douvaine, France

Leaders of the Douvaine Rescue/Escape Network:

Father Jean Rosay●+*, Douvaine (Comite d’Inter Mouvement après des Evacues; CIMADE),  Douvaine Escape/Rescue Network, Douvaine, Department of Haute-Savoie, France, died in Bergen Belsen concentration camp, Germany, awarded Righteous Among the Nations title January 23, 1991. (Yad Vashem Archives; Gutman, 2003, pp. 337, 433, 439, 480; Zuccotti, 1993, pp. 249, 356n4; Roland Birge testimony, pp. 31-33, 32, Thérèse Neury testimony, pp. 34-35, and Suzanne Loiseau testimony, pp. 34-35, in “Résistance non violente: La filière de Douvaine—l’Abbé Jean Rosay, Joseph Lancon, François Perillat—morts en deportation,” Douvaine, Haute-Savoie, unpublished brochure, May 24, 1987)

Rosay, Father Jean-Joseph File 3580 Father Jean-Joseph Rosay●, the priest of Douvaine, near the Swiss border in the département of Haute-Savoie, worked with all his power to help Jews cross the border illegally. For this purpose he created an impressive network staffed by Catholic priests, Protestant clergymen, and lay people from villages and towns in the border area. Rosay used his home as a transit station for Jewish children until they could safely run the border. The Jewish organization OSE and the Protestant organization CIMADE referred Jewish children to Rosay. At Father Rosay’s request, Georges Perrod● (q.v.), principal of the government school in Douvaine, provided Jewish children with temporary hiding places while preparing to cross the border. On February 10, 1944, the Gestapo arrested Father Rosay and two members of his congregation, Joseph Lançon● (q.v.) and François Périllat● (q.v.), who had served as volunteer border guides. All three were deported to Auschwitz. Father Rosay was taken to Bergen-Belsen in January 1945, and died there several days before the British liberated the camp. Joseph Lançon and François Périllat perished as well. On March 19, 1987, Yad Vashem recognized Father Jean-Joseph Rosay as Righteous Among the Nations.

Madeleine Barot●, CIMADE, co-founder of CIMADE, general secretary.  Committee for Action on Behalf of Refugees (Comité d’Inter Mouvement après des Evacues; CIMADE), France, established 1939, see also Archdiocese of Toulouse, France; Diocese of Nice, France; Pères de Sion, France; American Friends Service Committee (AFSC); Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA); Swiss Children’s Rescue Organization; Czech Aid; Douvaine Escape Network; Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon; Christian FriendshipCIMADE was part of, and sponsored by, the World Council of Churches.  CIMADE maintained four stations: Marseilles, Vabre, Pomeyol and Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon.  CIMADE had teams in the following French concentration camps: Rivesaltes, Brens, Le Récébédou, Nexon and Gurs.  They provided aid and relief to prisoners.  They also aided prisoners to gain release from the camps.

Awarded Righteous Among the Nations title March 28, 1988 (Yad Vashem Archives; Fabre, 1970; Gutman, 2003, pp. 57, 402; Hallie, 1979; Zuccotti, 1993, pp. 68-69, 71-72, 228, 230, 231, 246).

Members of the Douvaine Rescue/Escape Network:

Beetschen●, Louis Beetschen, Léontine File 3580a

Tania Meller was a Jewish child sheltered by the OSE (Organisation de Secours aux Enfants). She was one of twenty-two children whom Jean-Joseph Rosay● (q.v.), a Catholic priest who assisted the OSE, was planning to smuggle into Switzerland near Douvaine, a village in the département of Haute-Savoie. The presence of numerous collaborators in the region made the operation particularly dangerous, and the danger was heightened by frequent German patrols because of the village’s proximity to the Swedish border. Father Rosay headed a rescue network in Douvaine, with the support of other villagers. Before the group set out to cross the border, three families in the village, responding to Rosay’s request, offered to shelter three of the children in the group. Meller, one of the three children, lived with the Beetschen family until the area was liberated. The Beetschens, a Catholic family with three daughters, were peasants who lived next door to the village priest. Father Rosay continued to care for the children and to supervise their religious education. Tania Meller (renamed Thérèse) attended mass every Sunday to avoid arousing suspicion. Nevertheless, Father Rosay ruled that the Jewish girl should not be forced to learn the catechism, and neither he nor the Beetschens ever tried to convert her. On the contrary, each week, the priest gathered the three Jewish children and secretly taught them Bible passages so they would not forget their origins.

Father Rosay was eventually betrayed by collaborators; he was arrested and sent to Bergen-Belsen, where he perished. Meller’s memoirs describe the entire village fondly and depict Beetschen as an especially likable person. After the war, Meller remained in close contact with Léontine Beetschen, whom she called Mother, and with Marie-Louise, one of the daughters. On March 19, 1987, Yad Vashem recognized Louis and Léontine Beetschen as Righteous Among the Nations.

Berchmans, Sister Jeanne (Meienhofer, Marie) File 5025

Jeanne Berchmans (b. 1897) was a Swiss nun who taught French, German, and steno-dactilography (a combination of shorthand and typewriting) at her convent’s residential school in Thonon-les-Bains (département of Haute-Savoie) in the French Alps. In early 1944, she was contacted by Father Rosay● (q.v.), a priest in nearby Douvaine who was active in rescuing Jews. Rosay asked Sister Jeanne to shelter three members of the Wittels family, Jews from Vienna, who had left Austria after the Anschluss in 1938; Mme Wittels, her twenty-one-year-old daughter Renée, and her nine-year-old son Bruno. Jeanne’s fluency in German, owing to her Swiss origin, allowed her to converse with the Wittels easily. Jeanne introduced the Wittels as residents of Alsace who had been forced to leave their homes, thus supplying an explanation for their German accents. The Wittels stayed in the convent until the liberation, and Sister Jeanne met all their daily needs. When German police raided the convent one day in search of Jews, Sister Jeanne hid the Wittels in an out-of-the-way room and told the Germans that the inhabitants of the room had come down with scarlet fever. The risk of infection frightened the Germans away. On October 6, 1991, Yad Vashem recognized Sister Jeanne Berchmans as Righteous Among the Nations.

Girod●, Emile

Girod●, Juliette

Girod●, Odette

File 8627 Emile Girod was the chief gardener of the city of Thonon-les-Bains (Haute-Savoie). He was housed in a spacious flat in the building next door to City Hall with his wife Juliette and their two daughters. During the 1941-1942 school year, Odette, the eldest, made friends with Jacqueline Sochouk and frequently invited her to her home. Jacqueline still remembers: “The whole town would come by. I went there regularly to do my homework with Odette, and my parents often came to say hello and spend a few moments with this hospitable family.” The Sochouks were Russian Jews who had immigrated to Paris. They had left the capital to seek shelter in Thonon during the occupation. However, the Germans occupied that city in September 1943. Emile Girod told Samuel, Jacqueline’s father, that he had seen his name on a list of Jews about to be arrested. He told the Sochouks and their three children to come to his home. Samuel, who did not want to endanger his friend, hid in a chicken coop for two days. The two families soon concluded that the refugees’ only hope was to cross into Switzerland. The gardener promptly set up the rescue operation. In the early afternoon of September 20, five people rode bicycles from Thonon to Douvaine: Emile Girod, Odette, her friend Jacqueline and Samuel Sochouk with his eight-year-old son Gilbert behind him on his bicycle. In Veigey, five hundred meters from the border, a farmer who did occasional duty as a border runner, with no thought of reward, took charge of Samuel and the boy and led them into Switzerland by nightfall.

The other three returned to Thonon by bus. The following Sunday, Odette and her mother accompanied Mrs Sochouk and her daughters Jacqueline and Micheline by bus. The generous border runner then escorted the three women to safety. “The Girods saved our lives while risking their lives,” wrote Jacqueline. “We were human beings in jeopardy and they were the best humanity canoffer. They were simple, they were good and they did not expect their deed to bring them glory.” On September 2, 1999, Yad Vashem recognized Emile and Juliette Girod and their daughter Odette Girod as Righteous Among the Nations.

Joseph Lancon*+●, (“Jo”), layperson, (Comite d’Inter Mouvement après des Evacues; CIMADE), Village of Veigy-Foncenex, member of the Douvaine Rescue Network, awarded Righteous Among the Nations title May 16, 1989, (Yad Vashem Archives; Gutman, 2003, pp. 337, 433)

Thérèse (Neury) Lancon●, layperson, (Comite d’Inter Mouvement après des Evacues; CIMADE), Village of Veigy-Foncenex, member of the Douvaine Rescue Network, awarded Righteous Among the Nations title May 16, 1989, (Yad Vashem Archives; Gutman, 2003, pp. 337, 433)

Lançon, Joseph Lançon (Neury), Thérèse File 4239 Joseph Lançon, nicknamed “Jo,” was a Catholic widower who lived with his children on a modest farm in Veigy-Foncenex, a small village in the Alps, several hundred meters from the Swiss border. During the occupation, Lançon smuggled hundreds of refugees to Switzerland at the request of Abbé Jean-Joseph Rosay● (q.v.), the priest of his village and of the neighboring village, Douvaine. Lançon was assisted by his eldest daughter, Thérèse, and a young neighbor, François Périllat● (q.v.). Lançon was a member of a team known as “the Douvaine escape network,” which helped hundreds of Jewish refugee children cross the Swiss border to safety. One of the Jewish survivors, Jean Valbot, who met Lançon through Father Figuet, later described the border-running experience. At his meeting with Lançon, it was decided that Valbot and his family would cross the border that very night, September 9, 1943. Delay was impossible because control of the border was about to pass from Italian into German hands, and crossing would henceforth be much more difficult. Late that night, the Valbot family met with Lançon, who led them directly to the spot chosen for crossing the border, a hole in the barbed wire fence through which the refugees could cross into Switzerland. Thus the Valbots, like many other Jews, had their lives saved. Joseph Lançon performed these rescues out of pure altruism, with no thought of reward. Regrettably, however, Lançon paid dearly for his behavior.

On October 5, 1943, the Germans arrested his daughter Thérèse; she was miraculously freed after a few days. On February 10, 1944, François Perillat, Joseph Lançon, Father Rosay, and Father Figuet, activists in the smuggling network, were arrested after informers tipped off the Germans. All but Father Figuet were deported to a death camp, where they perished. Valbot later described them as “sublime examples of love, courage, and devotion.” On May 16, 1989, Yad Vashemrecognized Joseph Lançon and his daughter Thérèse Neury-Lançon as Righteous Among the Nations.

Suzanne Loiseau-Chevalley● (b. 1918) (Comite d’Inter Mouvement après des Evacues; CIMADE). Was active in the Protestant refugee aid organization CIMADE and was a close associate of the secretary general Madeleine Barot*.(Fabre, 1970; Nodot, 1978; Priacel-Pittet (Tatchou) report; Suzanne Loiseu report; Zucotti, 1993, pp. 248, 355n3)

Loiseau-Chevalley, Suzanne Suzanne Loiseau-Chevalley (b. 1918) was active in the Protestant refugee aid organization CIMADE and was a close associate of the secretary general Madeleine Barot●. Barot was the first one to send non-Jewish student volunteers to live with the Jews in the internment camps in southern France and provide them with food, first aid, and emotional support. Suzanne joined one of the groups of CIMADE in February 1942 and worked in the Brens camp, and others, including Naillat, and Saint-Sulpice. She took an active part in smuggling Jewish refugees to Spain, including supplying them with false documents obtained from various government offices. In January 1943, Suzanne joined the Swiss border smuggling network in Douvaine (Haute-Savoie) headed by the priest Jean-Joseph Rosay●, and staffed by Catholic priests, Protestant clergymen, and lay people from villages and towns in the border area. Suzanne’s job was to accompany young children to the homes of willing hosts and when the time came, to smuggle them across the border into Switzerland. In February 1944, while smuggling Jewish children through the difficult mountainous terrain to Switzerland, Suzanne fell from a cliff and was badly injured. Her friends smuggled her to Switzerland and had her hospitalized. Thus came to an end her efforts as a smuggler. Suzanne Loiseau-Chevalley carried out her dangerous rescue missions as a labor of love, without remuneration, prompted by her strong religious beliefs and humanitarian ideals.

On July 18, 2006, Yad Vashem recognized Suzanne Loiseau-Chevalley as Righteous Among the Nations.

François Périllat●+*, layperson (Comite d’Inter Mouvement après des Evacues; CIMADE), Marc Boegner Rescue Network, layperson, awarded Righteous Among the Nations title May 6, 1989, (Gutman, 2003, p. 337; Yad Vashem Archives) see Joseph Lançon and Jean-Joseph Rosay

Périllat, François File 4239a During the occupation, François Périllat of the village of Veigy-Foncenex, together with Joseph Lançon● (q.v.), a farmer and his employer, smuggled hundreds of Jews to Switzerland. Périllat was a central figure in the network of border runners, which included clergymen, underground operatives, and local residents. The fugitives turned first to the clergy, particularly Father Jean-Joseph Rosay● (q.v.), the priest of Douvaine, who sent them to Périllat and his comrades. These local people exploited their familiarity with the terrain and considerable experience to smuggle Jews over the border in the safest possible way. Périllat’s daring operations saved the lives of hundreds of Jews, but not his own. The Germans occupied this area on September 9, 1943, and Périllat’s activities were discovered. He, Lançon and Rosay were arrested and deported to concentration camps in the east. Périllat was shuttled from one camp to another and forced to do backbreaking work, until he died of exhaustion on December 13, 1944, in the Hersbrueck camp in Bavaria. On May 16, 1989, Yad Vashem recognized François Périllat as Righteous Among the Nations.

Georges Perrod, school principal see Father Jean Joseph Rosay●, Comite d’Inter Mouvement après des Evacues; (CIMADE), Douvaine Rescue/Escape Network, Douvaine, France, school principal, awarded Righteous Among the Nations title October 17, 1994, (Yad Vashem Archives; Gutman, 2003)

At Father Jean Joseph Rosay’s● request, Georges Perrod● (q.v.), principal of the government school in Douvaine, provided Jewish children with temporary hiding places while preparing to cross the border.

Maria Perrod●, wife of Georges Perrod, CIMADE, Douvaine Rescue/Escape Network, Douvaine, France, awarded Righteous Among the Nations title October 17, 1994, (Yad Vashem Archives; Gutman, 2003)

Mireille Philip● was active in the Protestant rescue organization CIMADE. Départment of Haute-Savoie, CIMADE, smuggled Jews from Le Chambon to Switzerland, she worked with Father Camille Folliet, Father Jean Rosay, Pierre Piton, Albert Roux, Mme. Roux, awarded Righteous Among the Nations title March 18, 1976, (Yad Vashem Archives; Gutman, 2003, pp. 439, 485)

Philip, Mireille File 1026 Mireille Philip was active in the Protestant rescue organization CIMADE. Her husband, Socialist leader André Philip, had left occupied France in 1940 and joined General de Gaulle. Mireille assumed responsibility for leading small groups of young Jews from the town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon to the Swiss border, from where they were smuggled into Switzerland. Although aware of the risks of these operations, she worked energetically, instilled confidence in the youth, and recruited additional volunteers for work in rescuing Jews. CIMADE obtained Swiss entry visas for all Jews whom its agents delivered across the border. To obtain the visas, lists had to be taken to Switzerland with extreme precautions. For that purpose, Mireille Philip sometimes went to Geneva on a locomotive, disguised as a railroad mechanic. Sometimes it was necessary to wait several days for the visas, and Philip would have to hide her Jews in the département of Haute-Savoie, near the border. She was assisted by Catholic priests and institutions, including Father Camille Folliet● (q.v.) of Annecy and Father Jean Rosay● (q.v.) of the town of Douvaine. In January 1943, Mireille Philip turned over her duties in CIMADE to Pierre Piton● (q.v.) and joined the Resistance. After the war, she described her experiences in the rescue operations: “By helping them, we received more than we gave. After all, it was so convenient to be in our situation and not in theirs. For we had chosen our role, which, in my opinion, was a normal situation that discriminated in our favor.”

On March 18, 1976, Yad Vashem recognized Mireille Philip as Righteous Among the Nations.