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| Europe |
| WWII - The daring nun who secretly saved 83 Jewish children |
| 2020-09-06 |
| [BBC] Two Jewish girls from Alsace found themselves in great danger when Germany invaded France 80 years ago. But while their parents and younger sister were caught and murdered, they survived - with dozens of other Jewish children - thanks to the bravery of a nun in a convent near Toulouse. Twelve-year-old Hélène Bach was playing in the garden with her younger sister, Ida, when they saw a military truck approaching and rushed inside. The two girls and their mother had left their home in Alsace Lorraine, north-eastern France, after the German invasion in May 1940 and started travelling towards the "free zone" in the south of the country. To reduce the risk of the whole family being caught, it had been decided that the father, Aron, and oldest daughter, Annie, would make the journey separately. But when Aron and Annie were arrested in 1941 and taken to a detention camp near Tours, Hélène's mother rented a house nearby. And they were still there a year later, when the German soldiers came driving up the road. Hélène and eight-year-old Ida ran into the kitchen to warn their mother. "My mother told us to run - to hide in the woods," Hélène says. "I was holding my little sister by the hand but she did not want to come with me. She wanted to go back to my mother. I could hear the Germans. I let her hand go and she ran back." |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #4 how many nuns & priests sold people out to the Nazis? Some, Clem. And some only saved those who would be baptised. But some, like this nun and the Ursuline Mother Superior of the school in Hildesheim, Germany who did not pause before committing all her school and the families of the other students to keep my mother among them in the face of Nazi threats, laid it all on the line for people who had nothing in common with them but humanity. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2020-09-06 19:10 |
| #3 I wonder how many nuns & priests sold people out to the Nazis? |
| Posted by: Clem 2020-09-06 16:23 |
| #2 Whoever saves one life saves the world entire. |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2020-09-06 15:46 |
| #1 There is so much good to be found in the study of history, as well as the usually decried surfeit of evil. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2020-09-06 14:33 |