Germaine Hommel

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Children's colony Les Feux follets in Saint-Cergues-les-Voirons (2014)
Holiday home Feux follets in Saint-Cergues-les-Voirons (2014)

Germaine Hommel (born June 20, 1893 in Paris , † August 30, 1982 in Cherbourg ) was a Swiss escape helper and children's home manager. She had married Jean Berthélemy Albessard in 1924 and was granted Swiss citizenship .

Life

Germaine Alice Lapeyre grew up as the daughter of an actor and a mechanic in Paris. After the death of her husband and the father of her two children, she married the Swiss lawyer Gustave Hommel in 1926.

In 1939 she took over the management of the children's colony "Les Feux follets" in Saint-Cergues- les-Voirons for the Swiss Working Group for War Damaged Children (SAK) (from 1942 Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross ) . The house was built in the 1930s as a vacation colony for their children by Italian anti-fascists who fled to Annemasse and Geneva .

The village of Saint-Cergues was three kilometers from the Swiss border , opposite the municipality of Jussy in the canton of Geneva . During the Second World War, remote border villages gained an important strategic importance as escape routes for illegal border crossings (filières de passages clandestins). In addition to their considerable work in the children's home, Germaine Hommel, her deputy Renée Farny and Marthe Bouvard (the laundry supervisors), at the request of Rösli Näf, agreed to risk their lives if numerous children illegally cross the border (including young people at risk from the Château de la Hille colony ) and to help adults to save them from deportation to extermination camps.

The mostly Jewish youngsters arrived in Saint-Cergues in groups of three or four, where they spent the night and the next morning they took part in a walk with the other children along the border and quietly settled down. With the help of the young French farmer Léon Balland, they were able to hide in the forest and, if the Swiss border patrols were otherwise busy, cross the border.

After Léon Balland was sent to Germany as a forced laborer (Service du travail obligatoire STO) in June 1943, he was able to jump off the train and go underground. The three women continued the illegal border crossings without him and Renée Farny took over his role. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape, the SRK Children's Aid Committee decided in February 1943 that she was transferred because of the violation of the rule of neutrality.

When the Germans occupied the region in September 1943, the border crossing was monitored day and night. Germaine Hommel was involved in the Resistance from 1943 to 1944 and was arrested by the Nazis in 1944 and deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp . After her liberation from the camp, she was 100 percent disabled during the war . She settled in Fermanville ( Département Manche ) in Normandy , where she stayed in the Cherbourg hospital until her death.

In May 1944 the director of the Feux follets colony , Berta Gasser, had to draw up a list of the children at the request of the Prefect of Haute-Savoie. The list remained in the mayor's office drawer and was never forwarded to the Vichy authorities.

Honor

  • In 1958 she received the War Cross ( Croix de guerre ) and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor (Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur) as a sub-lieutenant of the French combat troops (sous-lieutenant des Forces francaises combattantes).
  • In 1960 she was promoted to an officer of the Legion of Honor (Officier de la Légion d'honneur) as Senior Unterleutnant (ancien sous-lieutenant des Forces francaises combattantes).
  • In 1992, Germaine Hommel and Renée Farny were posthumously awarded the " Righteous Peoples " medal at a celebration in Saint-Cergues, together with Marthe Bouvard and Léon Balland, who was present.

literature

  • Anne-Marie Im Hof-Piguet : Escape route through the back door. A Red Cross helper in occupied France 1942–1944 . Verlag im Waldgut, Frauenfeld 1985, ISBN 3-7294-0045-2 .
  • Michel Puéchavy: Renée Farny et Germaine Hommel. Two women heroes aux portes de la Confédération suisse. In: Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.): Forgotten women. Humanitarian aid to children and official refugee policy 1917–1948 . Verlag Schwabe, Basel 2010, ISBN 3-7965-2695-0 .
  • Yagil Limore: Chrétiens et Juifs sous Vichy (1940-1944). Sauvetage et désobéissance civile. Préface by Yehuda Bauer. 2005, 766 pages - ISBN 978-2204075855 .
  • Patrick Cabanel: Histoire des Justes en France . Armand Colin, 2012, ISBN 978-2-200-35044-4 .
  • Odile Munos-du Peloux: Passer en Suisse, les passages clandestins entre la Haute-Savoie et la Suisse, 1940-1944 . Press Universitaires de Grenoble, Grenoble 2002, ISBN 2706110732 .
  • Serge Nessi: The Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross 1942–1945 and the role of the doctor Hugo Oltramare . Preface by Cornelio Sommaruga . Karolinger Verlag, Vienna / Leipzig 2013, ISBN 978-3-85418-147-7 (French original edition: Éditions Slatkine , Genève 2011, ISBN 978-2-8321-0458-3 ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michel Puéchavy: Renée Farny et Germaine Hommel. Two women heroes aux portes de la Confédération suisse. In: Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.): Forgotten women. Humanitarian aid to children and official refugee policy 1917–1948.
  2. ↑ Germaine Hommel on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
personal data
SURNAME Hommel, Germaine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss children's home director
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1982
Place of death Cherbourg