Georges Garel (also known as Gasquet, born Grigori Garfinkel; 1 March 1909, Vilna – 9 January 1979, Paris)[1] was a Frenchman of Russian Jewish extraction celebrated for his exploits with the French Resistance in World War II.
His subsequent efforts resulted in an organisation which became known as the "circuit Garel"[2] which would eventually rehouse some 1,600 Jewish children into places in southern France under false papers, thus saving them from deportation.
In a boarding house where he took his meals, he met Abbé Alexandre Glasberg, Nina Gourfinkel, and Raymond Winter, all engaged in clandestine actions.
[3] In 1942, with his future brother-in-law Charles Lederman and Abbé Alexandre Glasberg, he helped those who had been imprisoned in Vénissieux under Pétain’s “Status of the Jews”.
During the summer of 1942, the round-ups conducted in the Lyon region brought one thousand two hundred people deemed to be of Jewish race to Vénissieux.
The following month, Joseph Weill, medical director of the OSE who was forced to subordinate himself to the Union générale des israélites de France (UGIF, General Organization of Jews in France) and saw several of its shelters serve as targets for the raids, asked Georges Garel to set up an underground network to hide children under the age of sixteen under false identities and disperse them among the population and then if possible have them cross the Swiss border.
[5] The network was at the heart of the clandestine form of the OSE and brought together all the services necessary for the task, illegal printers, liaison officers, landlords ...
Georges Garel's role was to keep contact with these scattered children, provide for their maintenance, and develop the network in what was the southern zone.
She took part in the demonstration of 11 November 1940 by school and university students, at the Place de l'Étoile, and was imprisoned as a Jew for three months at Fresnes.