Madeleine Barot

Madeleine Barot (born July 4, 1909 in Châteauroux , † December 28, 1995 in Paris ) was an important figure in French Protestantism and in the ecumenical movement . During the Second World War , she saved the lives of numerous Jews.

Life

Madeleine Barot was born into a family of teachers. After a higher education in Clermont-Ferrand and Versailles , she studied history at the Sorbonne . After completing her history degree, she studied archival and library science . She did an internship at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and in 1935 became archivist at the École française de Rome , where she worked until 1940.

During her studies, Madeleine Barot was a member of the Fédération universelle des associations chrétiennes d'étudiants (general umbrella organization of Christian student associations). It came from the Girl Scouts and from working among Protestant students. On August 15, 1940, she was elected General Secretary of the Comité inter mouvements auprès des évacués , CIMADE , succeeding Georgette Siegrist. Suzanne de Dietrich also took part in the founding of the Cimade . The first task of the Cimade was to provide assistance to the people displaced from Alsace-Lorraine by the invasion of German troops and to assist them with their resettlement in other French regions, particularly in the south-west. While working in the Cimade, Madeleine Barot was given access to the Camp de Gurs , the French internment camp near Pau , where mainly Jews and politically persecuted people were imprisoned. Together with other helpers from the Cimade, she shared the life of the refugees housed in barracks , who suffered from cold and hunger and lived in constant fear of being extradited to the National Socialist German Reich . Within the Cimade she organized the first escape routes, arranged hiding places and provided the persecuted people with false papers. She also stayed for a long time in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon to help the Jews who had found refuge there. The residents of this place and its surroundings have become known for their courageous support for the Jews, as they were able to save 3,000 to 5,000 people from being transported to concentration camps . Madeleine Barot was General Secretary of Cimade until 1956.

Madeleine Barot, who was certified as having an "indomitable energy", was also active on an international level. In July and August 1939, for example, she chaired a commission at the 1st World Conference of Christian Youth in Amsterdam . At this world conference, organized by Willem Adolf Visser 't Hooft , the need to foster the spirit of resistance was discussed.

In 1953 Madeleine Barot worked in the World Council of Churches in the project “The man and the woman in the church and society”. In doing so, she made a decisive contribution to the recognition of the position of women in the Church. Madeleine Barot was also responsible for the Action of Christians for the Elimination of Torture (ACAT). And she took over tasks in the Protestant League of France .

In 1980 Madeleine Barot was honored with the honorary title “ Righteous Among the Nations ” by the Israeli National Holocaust Memorial Center Yad Vashem for her selfless commitment to persecuted Jews during the Third Reich .

In 1986 she founded the French section of the Conférence Mondiale des Religions pour la Paix (World Conference of Religions for Peace) together with the Catholic Jacqueline Rougé .

Madeleine Barot died on December 28, 1995 in Paris.

literature

Madeleine Barot, untitled, in Raphael Delpard: Les enfants cachés. Jean-Claude Lattès, Paris 1993, ISBN 2-7096-1133-3 , pp. 156-167.
André Jacques: Madeleine Barot , Éditions du Cerf et Labor et Fides, Paris 1989
Jeanne Merle d'Aubigné, Violette Mouchon, Émile C. Fabre (eds.): God's underground: CIMADE 1939 - 1945. Accounts of the activity of the French protestant church during the German occupation of the country in World War II. Foreword Marc Boegner . With a cape. about CIMADE today. Translated by William and Patricia Nottingham. Bethany Press, St. Louis (Missouri) , 1970, ISBN 0-8272-1214-3 (from French: Les clandestins de Dieu . Arthème Fayard, Paris 1968; again Labor & Fides, Freiburg im Üechtland, 1989, ISBN 2- 8309-0588-1 )
- In German: Adolf Freudenberg (Ed.): “Save them!” The French and the Geneva ecumenical movement in the service of those persecuted by the Third Reich. Evangelischer Verlag Zollikon EVZ, Zurich, 1969. Again as: “Liberate those who are dragged to death!” Ecumenism through closed borders 1939 - 1945. Christian Kaiser Verlag , Munich, 1989, ISBN 978-3-459-01591-7 .
Patrick Cabanel: De la paix aux resistances. Les protestants français de 1930 à 1945. Fayard, Paris, 2015, ISBN 978-2-213-68576-2 (Barot passim)

notes

^ The Righteous Among The Nations: Barot, Madeleine. Yad Vashem , accessed October 13, 2019 .
↑ In French. The book is not divided into chapters, there is no table of contents. Delpard and co-workers conducted 70 interviews with those involved in rescue operations for Jewish children (or those themselves); the conversation with Barot is seamlessly inserted, in direct speech with question and answer. In a specific case, she reports that she and her staff took around a hundred children in one night from a camp in Vénissieux near Lyon, who had been imprisoned there with their parents for transport to the Nazi extermination camps by the Vichy regime . The local Resistance had switched off the electricity in the whole place by sabotage and thus disconnected the barbed wire around the camp. The children were taken out of the sleeping crowd with flashlights under time pressure, and their parents' written consent was confiscated, incorrectly citing Cardinal Gerlier from Lyon . At the same time, the Vichysts worked feverishly to repair the power supply. Abbé Glasberg, see French Wikipedia under Alexandre Glasberg, took part in the action personally. This action to save Jewish children is also mentioned in Patrick Cabanel: Histoire des Justes en France. Armand Colin, Paris 2012, ISBN 978-2-200-35044-4 , p. 22, readable in online stores. Based on the latest research, it is assumed that 89 children were rescued, and a number of adults fled: Valérie Perthuis Portheret, Lyon contre Vichy. Août 1942: le sauvetage de tous les enfants juifs du camp de Vénissieux. Ed. Lyonnaises d'Art et d'Histoire, Lyon 2012, ISBN 2841473007 .
↑ German version of the book slightly changed compared to the French original and the English. translation

personal data
SURNAME	Barot, Madeleine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French ecumenical personality
DATE OF BIRTH	4th July 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH	Chateauroux
DATE OF DEATH	December 28, 1995
Place of death	Paris

[1] The Righteous Among The Nations: Barot, Madeleine. Yad Vashem , accessed October 13, 2019 .

[2] In French. The book is not divided into chapters, there is no table of contents. Delpard and co-workers conducted 70 interviews with those involved in rescue operations for Jewish children (or those themselves); the conversation with Barot is seamlessly inserted, in direct speech with question and answer. In a specific case, she reports that she and her staff took around a hundred children in one night from a camp in Vénissieux near Lyon, who had been imprisoned there with their parents for transport to the Nazi extermination camps by the Vichy regime . The local Resistance had switched off the electricity in the whole place by sabotage and thus disconnected the barbed wire around the camp. The children were taken out of the sleeping crowd with flashlights under time pressure, and their parents' written consent was confiscated, incorrectly citing Cardinal Gerlier from Lyon . At the same time, the Vichysts worked feverishly to repair the power supply. Abbé Glasberg, see French Wikipedia under Alexandre Glasberg, took part in the action personally. This action to save Jewish children is also mentioned in Patrick Cabanel: Histoire des Justes en France. Armand Colin, Paris 2012, ISBN 978-2-200-35044-4 , p. 22, readable in online stores. Based on the latest research, it is assumed that 89 children were rescued, and a number of adults fled: Valérie Perthuis Portheret, Lyon contre Vichy. Août 1942: le sauvetage de tous les enfants juifs du camp de Vénissieux. Ed. Lyonnaises d'Art et d'Histoire, Lyon 2012, ISBN 2841473007 .

[3] German version of the book slightly changed compared to the French original and the English. translation