Maternity suisse d'Elne

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The former Maternité suisse in Elne, after its restoration (2007)
Locations internment camp, maternity leave, SAK / SRK colonies (selection)

The Maternité suisse d'Elne in the Château d'en Bardou in Elne in the French department Pyrénées-Orientales was a Swiss maternity clinic for pregnant women from the French refugee camps during the Spanish Civil War .

prehistory

In 1937, 14 aid organizations formed the Swiss Association for Children of Spain (SAS) ( Asociación de Ayuda Suiza a los niños de la guerra ) to help care for refugees and those in need of the Spanish civil war. From May 1, 1939 Fritz Wartenweiler was president of the working group. At the request of the community service , the teacher Elisabeth Eidenbenz traveled to Spain, where she helped with the evacuations of children in Madrid and took care of the staff household in the Ayuda Suiza headquarters in Burjassot near Valencia and looked after the canteen she set up. In December 1938 she returned to Switzerland.

After the defeat of the Republicans by the Franco troops, the exodus ( Retirada ) of over 450,000 refugees from the Spanish Civil War to France began in February 1939 . In the internment camps in Argelès-sur-Mer , Camp de Rivesaltes , Saint-Cyprien and Septfonds , tens of thousands lived in unimaginable conditions, including pregnant women whose children had little chance of survival.

Maternity Brouilla

The voluntary helper Karl Ketterer also convinced Elisabeth Eidenbenz to travel from Zurich to southern France at the end of January 1939 and to set up a maternity clinic in an empty house in Brouilla near Perpignan , to which he could bring the pregnant women from the internment camps with the existing official permission. The women were picked up in the Rosinante , a car that the SAS also used in the Spanish Civil War. The infants' cribs were fruit crates that could be given to mothers and their trousseau when they had to return to the camp after a few weeks. From March 1939 until it was closed in September 1939, 33 children were born.

Maternity suisse d'Elne

Two weeks after Brouilla had to be evacuated, Eidenbenz found a completely dilapidated castle with a glass dome in Elne, a few kilometers from Brouilla . The SAS (from 1940 Swiss Association for War Damaged Children SAK ) financed the cheap purchase of the building and the two-month restoration work.

Eidenbenz was able to set up the new Swiss maternity hospital in Elne, put it into operation at the beginning of December 1939 and ran it - from 1942 under the successor organization of the SAK, the Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross (SRK, Kh) - with the temporary help of Elsbeth Kasser , Elsa Lüthi-Ruth , Friedel Bohny-Reiter , Renée Farny and other Swiss nurses. To support its employees, the homes and for the logistics of the delivery of aid supplies, the SAK / SRK had set up a delegation base for the southern zone under the direction of Maurice Dubois in Toulouse .

In the simply furnished maternity room, which was supposed to serve Spanish refugees and was supported by Spanish staff, the rooms were given Spanish names: Barcelona for toddlers from six months, Madrid for the baby room, Córdoba for the room for pregnant women, San Sébastian, Santander and Zaragoza for the mother's room, Seville for the children's room, Canigou for the office and living space of the Directrice Eidenbenz, who was called Señorita Isabel . The delivery rooms were on the first and second floors. The initial camp beds were later replaced by military beds with iron frames. As in Brouilla, the children lay in fruit boxes or laundry baskets, in which they could be brought to the balcony or garden to get the fresh air and sun that was important to them.

The Maternity was founded in 1939 for the Spanish refugee women. After the outbreak of war, Jewish women and children were also accepted from the summer of 1940. Friedel Bohny-Reiter brought pregnant women and sick children from Rivesaltes to Elne.

From 1939 until it was closed in April 1944, 603 children of 22 nationalities were born, including around 200 of Jewish mothers, and many more were nursed to health. The first midwife was a French woman, later Swiss midwives and infant nurses came to help for a few months under the protection of the Red Cross.

In addition to these births and childcare, the refugee camps in the region were supported with food deliveries and the construction of kitchen and canteen barracks. In Banyuls-sur-Mer there was a children's home (Pouponnière) directly by the sea as a dependence of Elne, where small children from Rivesaltes could relax. In 1942, the dépendence was relocated to Castres, three kilometers away, because the sea wind was too strong for small children.

The persecuted were helped to flee to Switzerland with forged papers. According to the principle of neutrality of the Red Cross, it was forbidden to help so-called "politically" persecuted Jews in France. This had to be done covertly.

In April 1944, the castle was confiscated by the German military because the Allied invasion was expected. Within four days everything had to be packed into two railway wagons and moved to Montagnac inland.

The palace, built in 1902 by the Danish star architect Viggo Dorph-Petersen in the Belle Époque style on behalf of the industrialist and JOB cigarette paper manufacturer Pierre Bardou , threatened to fall into disrepair after the Second World War. It was restored privately, later bought by the municipality of Elne and placed under protection in 2012 as a historical monument of the maternité suisse . A small museum is maintained in the castle. The house will again be used to accommodate war-damaged children.

Maternity Montagnac

After the maternity leave in Elne had been cleared, a new refuge was found for the mothers and children in Montagnac ( Aveyron department ). It was chaotic in Montagnac, because of the fighting between the Resistance and the Wehrmacht nothing worked. Only one child was born because the births took place in the hospital. When Elisabeth Eidenbenz returned to Switzerland in October 1944, one of her employees took over the management and passed it on to Emma Ott , who came from the La Hille colony in March 1945 . After moving again from Montagnac to Pau , she headed Maternité from January to May 1946, now for the Swiss donation .

Honors

  • In 2012 the castle was placed under protection by the municipality of Elne as a historical monument of the maternité suisse .
  • In 2013, a commemorative plaque was put up on the new building of the Arago Oceanology Laboratory on the site of the former Villa Saint-Jean in Banyuls-sur-Mer .

literature

  • Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.): Forgotten women. Humanitarian aid to children and official refugee policy 1917–1948: Friedel Bohny-Reiter, Elisabeth Eidenbenz, Renée Farny, Georgine Gerhard, Germaine Hommel, Anne-Marie Im Hof-Piguet, Regina Kägi-Fuchsmann , Elsbeth Kasser, Elsa Lüthi-Ruth, Rösli Näf , Emma Ott, Mathilde Paravicini , Nettie Sutro-Katzenstein , Ruth von Wild . Schwabe, Basel 2010, ISBN 978-3-7965-2695-4 .
  • Serge Nessi: The Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross 1942–1945 and the role of the doctor Hugo Oltramare. Karolinger, Vienna / Leipzig 2013, ISBN 978-3-85418-147-7 .
  • Tristan Castanier i Palau: Femmes en exil, Mères des camps, Élisabeth Eidenbenz et la Maternité suisse d'Elne (1939-1944). Editions Trabucaire, 2008, ISBN 978-284974074-3 .
  • Hélène Legrais: Les Enfants d'Élisabeth. Presses de la Cité, 2006, ISBN 978-225807169-8 .
  • Tristan Castanier: La Pouponnière de Banyuls-sur-Mer, une annexe de la Marternité Suisse d'Elne, July 1941 - November 1942, l'Association Générations Banyuls.

Movie

Web links

Commons : Maternité suisse d'Elne  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 597 are entered in the official register.
  2. ↑ La Semaine du Roussillon: La pouponnière de Banyuls-sur-Mer (1941-1942) ( Memento of the original of February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / aieux-bretons-et-normands.eklablog.com

Coordinates: 42 ° 36 ′ 15 ″  N , 2 ° 57 ′ 18 ″  E