Gilbert Lesage

Gilbert Robert Louis Lesage (19 May 1910 – 7 November 1989) was a Quaker charity worker and philanthropist who helped refugees before the Second World War and was responsible clandestinely for saving the lives of many Jews in southern France while working as the head of the Social Department for Aliens under the Vichy regime.

[1] His philosophy studies at the Lycée Rollin (now the Collège-lycée Jacques-Decour) in Paris were undertaken somewhat half-heartedly in competition with his own research in languages and ethnology, and a course he took in hotel management.

[3] In 1933, through Jack Hayland, Lesage was offered a bursary to study for a year at Woodbrooke College, the Quaker study centre in Birmingham, but the Entraide team recalled him to Paris in late 1933 to help reorganize the "foyer" for German, Jewish or political refugees in the rue de la Pierre Levée and to set up regional departments to welcome refugees and find them employment, especially by steering them to départements where there was no unemployment.

[4] Lesage worked for the French branch of the Service Civil International (SCI) from 10 January 1938 to 27 August 1939 and became its deputy secretary general.

This appointment was made by Henri Maux, who led the Commissariat de la lutte contre le chômage (CLC), a body formed in October 1940 to combat high unemployment across the nation.

[8] Besides the regular staff, Lesage worked clandestinely on behalf of refugees with "agents camouflés",[9] such as Léon Meiss [fr], Jean Pochard, Charles Morani and Jean-Philippe Bloch.

[10] On 1 January 1943, the SSE became the Contrôle social des étrangers and with the closure of the CLC was attached on May 1 to the Ministry of Labour and its head office moved from Vichy to Paris.

Lesage learnt on 16 August of a large-scale "ramassage" or rounding-up planned and decided to warn Jewish and other rescue organizations of the impending raid.

[11] A few days later, assisted by Amitiés chrétiennes, Dr Joseph Weill [fr] of the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) and Alexandre Glasberg [fr] (Abbé Glasberg), Lesage was personally able to make a case for exemption for more than 400 Jews at a camp in a disused barracks at Vénissieux near Lyon and thus save them from deportation.

[14] After the war, Lesage held various functions, among them: regional director in British and American-occupied Germany of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) (for displaced persons and refugees); journalist for Les Routiers in London; director of the Office intercommunal d'HLM de Briey (near Metz), managing Le Corbusier's third Cité Radieuse (built in 1959–1961);[15] property negotiator at the time of the transfer of Les Halles wholesale fresh food market to Rungis.

Towarzystwo Opieki nad Polakami we Francji 1941-1944 (with summary in English and French) Oficyna Wydawnicza Kucharski, Toruń (2013) ISBN 978-83-89376-96-1 OCLC 859749391 Pettinotti, Olivier; Anne Grynberg (foreword).