Germaine Ribière (13 April 1917 in Limoges, Haute-Vienne – 20 November 1999)[1] was a French Catholic, member of the Résistance, who saved numerous Jews during World War II, and was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations (July 18, 1967, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel).
As a student[2][3][4] at the University of Paris,[5] Germaine Ribière[6] reacted against the discrimination against the Jews, noting for example in her diary in May 1941: "Those who should be awake are those who put the others to sleep",[7] then in June 1941: "The Church, the hierarchy, remain silent.
[9] Deciding that her place was no more in Paris, she went to Vichy, where she got involved in the journal Cahiers du Témoignage Chrétien[10][11][12][13] and the organisation Amitié Chrétienne.
[9][14][15] During the roundups in the Zone libre, in Haute-Vienne, Creuse and Indre, on August 26 and in September 1942, Germaine Ribière and Pastor Chaudier of Limoges provided hideouts[16] in non-Jewish families[17] for the children of the homes of the OSE[18] of Masgelier and of Chabannes.
Born in Limoges in a deeply religious catholic family, she was at the time when she came to offer me her help at the day nursery, responsible of the JEC (Jeunesse etudiante chrétienne).
Her report on the dreadful circumstances in which the internees vegetated led to the Pastoral letter of Cardinal Jules Saliège of Toulouse, of August 23, 1942, severely condemning the Jewish persecutions.
[23][24] On August 23, 1942, the O.S.E., the Eclaireurs Israélites de France, the Amitiés Chrétiennes and several other humanitarian organisations, joined the «screening» committee of the 1200 Jews of around Lyon arrested during the roundups of the summer of 1942 and interned in the camp at Vénissieux.
The O.S.E., the Amitiés Chrétiennes and l'Action catholique of Germaine Ribière refused to give back the children despite the orders given by Vichy to the regional prefect Angéli to not separate the families.
[29][30] The Amitié Chrétienne, where Germaine Ribière belonged, was founded in Lyon in 1941, with the goal to help the Jews and other victims subjugated to the decrees of Vichy and the occupier.
On January 27, 1943, that organisation held an emergency meeting in Lyon at the domicile of the Swiss Protestant pastor Roland de Pury, in order to find the way to warn the Jews coming to get false papers that the offices of the Union générale des israélites de France (UGIF, General Organization of Jews in France), rue Sainte-Catherine were watched by the Gestapo.
[33][34] Germaine Ribière intervened to produce a false identity card for Jean-Marie Soutou (1912–2003),[35] great driving force of the catholic résistance (Amitiés Judéo-Chrétiennes), incarcerated at the Montluc prison, at Lyon.
In accompanying these pauvres gens until the line of demarcation she didn't content herself to be a moral support for them and to give some treatments to those who felt ill in the midst of these tragic convoys, but she brought back from this trip much useful information, indications and addresses that people had given, relative to those, the elderly, children, sick persons, that they were leaving behind.
Robert and Gérald Finaly, two Jewish children, were hidden during the Occupation by a Catholic network, where Mlle Antoinette Brun was a member.
[45][46] End March 1953: The French Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church of Lyon, Primat des Gaules, Pierre-Marie Gerlier, asked Germaine Ribière to find the Finaly children at the Basque Country.
June 25, 1953: The Court of Cassation having decided that the Finaly children were to be returned to their Jewish family, 48 hours later, Germaine Ribière made her last trip to Spain, to find them.
[47] At the Panthéon, in Paris, on January 18, 2007, on the occasion of the national ceremony in honor of the Righteous of France,[48] the President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac declared: "What a courage, what a generosity of spirit they needed!".
Though we tried to be inconspicuous and avoided official premises of any kind, we nevertheless had to appear periodically at the headquarters of the UGIF (Union Générale des Israélites de France) on Rue Ste.
The 1943 Gestapo raid that had nearly ensnared me was memorialized with a modest plaque affixed at the building entrance, placed there by the Jewish community of Lyon.
In Paris, I attended a lecture and book signing by Germaine Ribière, the author of a newly published memoir about the Finaly affair, which had gripped French society for eight years immediately following the war.
Their parents, Fritz and Annie Finaly, had sought refuge in France after their native Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany - to little avail.
Before their arrest, the parents had found shelter for their children in a convent, from which they were later transferred to a municipal nursery run by a devout Catholic woman who had them baptized.
After the war, when it was determined that the boys' parents had been killed in Auschwitz, the Church refused to release the children to their surviving aunt, who lived in Israel.
It announced the death at an advanced age, of Germaine Ribière, a Catholic Resistance fighter who had rescued many Jews during the Holocaust years.