Père Jacques

Père (Father) Jacques de Jésus, OCD, (1900 – 2 June 1945) was a French Roman Catholic priest and Discalced Carmelite friar.

While serving as headmaster of a boarding school run by his order, he took in several Jewish refugees to protect them from the Nazi government of occupation, for which he was arrested and imprisoned in various concentration camps.

His efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, resulting in his death at Linz, Austria, after having suffered in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex in 1945, weeks after its liberation by Allied Forces.

Pere Jacques was named one of the Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel in 1985, as a non-Jew who risked his life during the Holocaust to save Jews.

French film-maker Louis Malle paid tribute to Père Jacques, who was his primary school headmaster, in the 1987 film Au revoir les enfants.

[1] Bunel had considered becoming a Trappist monk before his ordination, and still sought some way of integrating his being drawn to an intense life of prayer, combined with service to others.

In 1985 the Israeli Holocaust remembrance center, Yad Vashem, honoured Père Jacques as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for his efforts in hiding Jewish students at his Catholic boarding school.