August Bohny

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August Bohny (1st from left), Friedel Reiter (1st row seated: 2nd from left) SRK employee meeting in Montluel, June 1942

August Bohny (born July 9, 1919 in Basel ; † August 18, 2016 there ) was a Swiss teacher , speech therapist and refugee shelfer.

Life

August Bohny grew up as the son of a tram - Kondukteurs in Basel, where he attended high school and made a musical education (piano and clarinet). 1937 joined the voluntary international community service . 1939–1941 he studied at the teachers' college and graduated from the recruit school .

In May 1941 he got in touch with Maurice Dubois , the head of the Working Group for War Damaged Children (SAK) (from 1942 Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross ), in Toulouse in southern France . In the Pringy children's colony he was introduced to work by the director Ruth von Wild .

Bohny spent a short time in the Talloires colony before arriving at Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in September 1941 . The remote area on the high plateau of the Cevennes was a former stronghold of the Huguenots who here Camisards were called, and during World War II, a center of the French Resistance . There he was co-founder and head of the Abric, Faidoli, Atelier Cévenol and Ferme Ecole children's homes , where around 200 children spent around six months each.

Thanks to Bohny's collaboration with Pastor André Trocmé and local refugee helpers, it was possible to save numerous children from raids and deportations. In the Chambon-sur-Lignon area, 3,000 to 5,000 people were saved from certain death in the camps through the commitment (false identity papers, ration cards, support for the escape to Switzerland) of their residents.

In 1942 he met Friedel Reiter in Montluel , who became his wife in 1944. After the liberation of France, they returned to Switzerland in December 1944, where their four children (Jörg, Verena, Hansruedi and Christoph) were born.

In 1945 he helped with the preparations for the construction of the Pestalozzi Children's Village and in July 1945 he managed the vacation of the surviving children from the Buchenwald concentration camp on the Zugerberg for the Buchenwald action of the Swiss donation . He later looked after malnourished Dutch children in Ticino.

From 1946 he taught difficult-to-educate children and worked as a speech therapist. From 1979 to 1995 he was President of the Swiss Central Association for the Blind (SZB).

The legacy is in the Archives for Contemporary History in Zurich.

Honors

  • 1994: Moral Courage Award from the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers (today: Jewish Foundation for the Righteous ), together with his wife.

Publications

  • with Roger Darcissac and illustrated by Hans Beutler: Faïdoli: chansonnier franco-suisse de la "Montagne" . Songbook. Publishing house Gilbert Chabrut, Saint-Étienne 1944.
  • with Walter Hohl: Mathematics in elementary school: Operative arithmetic with colored sticks. Multi-part for 1. – 3. School year with teachers' books. Klett and Balmer Verlag, Zug 1972.
  • Unforgotten stories. Community service, Swiss Children's Aid and the Red Cross in southern France 1941–1945. Preface by Margot Wicki-Schwarzschild . Edited and introduced by Helena Kanyar Becker. Edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn. Hartung-Gorre Verlag, Konstanz 2009, ISBN 3-86628-278-8 .

Movies

The events in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon have been filmed three times:

literature

  • Friedel Bohny-Reiter: Diary Le Journal de Rivesaltes. In French translation, 1993.
  • Friedel Bohny-Reiter: forecourt of destruction. Constance 1995.
  • Friedel Bohny-Reiter: Camp de Rivesaltes. Diary of a Swiss sister in the French internment camp Rivesaltes 1941–1942 . Preface by Margot Wicki-Schwarzschild. Introduction by Michèle Fleury-Seemuller. Edited by Helena Kanyar-Becker, Erhard Roy Wiehn (eds.). Hartung-Gorre publishing house, Konstanz 2010, ISBN 3-86628-291-5 . (New edition of the Forecourt of Annihilation ),
  • Paul Senn : «If you are human ... feel my need. Read in faces! " A photo report of the activities of the Swiss aid organization in children's homes and refugee camps in the south of France. in: Schweizer Illustrierte Zeitung , Zofingen, vol. 31 (No. 9/25 February 1942), pp. 261–265.
  • Mathilde Paravicini : Children come to Switzerland. In: Eugen Theodor Rimli (ed.): The book from the Red Cross. The Red Cross from the beginning until today. Fraumünster publishing house. Zurich 1944, pp. 336–367.
  • Antonia Schmidlin: Another Switzerland. Helpers, children of war and humanitarian policy 1933–1942. Chronos Publishing House. Zurich 1999, ISBN 978-3-905313-04-8 .
  • Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.): Forgotten women. Humanitarian aid to children and official refugee policy 1917–1948. Basel Contributions to History, Volume 182. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2010, ISBN 3-7965-2695-0 .
  • François Wisard: Les Justes suisses. CICAD 2007
  • Madeleine Lerf: “Buchenwald children ” - a Swiss aid campaign. Humanitarian engagement, political calculation and individual experience. Publications of the Archives for Contemporary History of the ETH Zurich, Volume 5. Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-0340-0987-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Photo by Friedel Reiter and August Bohny with a group of children in front of the Swiss aid barracks in the Rivesaltes internment camp
  2. ^ French committee for Yad Vashem: Chambon-sur-Lignon
  3. ↑ August Bohny on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
  4. ↑ Roger Darcissac was director of the Collège Cévenol in Chambon-sur-Lignon. He was honored as Righteous Among the Nations in 1988.
personal data
SURNAME Bohny, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss teacher
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH 18th August 2016
Place of death Basel