Rösli Näf

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Rösli Näf (right), Château de la Hille, 1941
Memorial plaque in the former internment camp Le Vernet

Rösli Näf (* 1911 in Glarus ; † 1996 ibid) was a Swiss nurse .

Life

Rösli Näf was the daughter of a conductor and grew up with three siblings in the city of Glarus, where she attended primary and secondary school. In order to acquire foreign language skills, she worked as a maid in Geneva and Lugano and went to England for two years. In preparation for the profession of nurse, she worked in a sanatorium in Davos , in a private psychiatric clinic in Meiringen and in Burghölzli in Zurich (today: Psychiatric University Clinic Zurich ), where she graduated as a nurse.

From 1937 to 1939 she worked for Albert Schweitzer in Lambaréné , where she met Emma Ott . After her return to Switzerland, she got in touch with Rodolfo Olgiati of the Swiss Working Group for War-Damaged Children (SAK) (from 1942 Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross (SRK)) in Bern and he became the head of the children's colony in the Château de la Hille in Montégut-Plantaurel ( Département Ariège (near Toulouse)) in southern France, which was set up by the SAK in September 1940 and housed around 100 - mainly Jewish German - refugee children.

At the beginning of May 1941 she reported to the delegate of the SAK (from 1942 SRK) for southern France, Maurice Dubois , in Toulouse , who, with a minimum of instructions, gave her a free hand in the concrete execution of the task at hand.

On August 26, 1942, 45 Jewish youths over the age of 16 from La Hille were brought by the French police to the Le Vernet internment camp, from where they were to be deported to Germany. When Näf found out where her protégés were, she drove to Le Vernet and obtained permission to enter the camp so that she could be with them. She stayed with them until they were released and brought them back to La Hille. Following the intervention of Maurice Dubois and the Swiss embassy to the Vichy government , the young people were allowed to return to the home on September 2nd after witnessing 400 people being deported from Le Vernet. In the autumn of 1942, Näf traveled to Bern to ask the management of Children's Aid to bring the endangered children to safety in Switzerland. The SRK Children's Aid Committee had repeatedly intervened with the Federal Council to bring the 168 Jewish residents of the SRK homes or at least the 80 young people at risk to Switzerland. However, the invasion of the Wehrmacht into the French southern zone in November 1942 destroyed this plan.

After the complete German occupation of France in November 1942, legal emigration was no longer possible. When the Jewish population in France was asked to report to the authorities in December 1942, Näf helped several children and young people to flee: Some managed to escape across the Pyrenees or found shelter with French farmers or several girls in a monastery A few joined the Resistance , 20 were able to secretly reach Switzerland, five had lost their way at the border and were picked up by German border guards on December 23, 1942. The young people had chosen the route via Haute-Savoie , where Germaine Hommel and Renée Farny from the colony of Saint-Cergues- les-Voirons helped them across the Swiss border . For the management of the SRC Children's Aid, Näf, Hommel and Farny had violated the Red Cross' principle of neutrality with their escape aid . The SRK Children's Aid Committee decided to transfer Näf, Hommel and Farny. Näf returned to Switzerland in May 1943.

The Center Henri-Dunant in Geneva (now the seat of the ICRC) housed over 30,000 children from 1942 to 1945

Back in Switzerland, she helped out in the Pro Juventute children's colony for guest children in Oberägeri . In November 1943, Rodolfo Olgiati made her vice-director of the Center Henri-Dunant in Geneva. The center was inaugurated in October 1942 in the former Hotel Carlton-Parc (today the seat of the ICRC) in order to be able to accommodate over 800 children from the children's trains from abroad; by the end of 1945, over 30,000 children were housed there. When the children's trains had to be temporarily shut down, the building was used as a reception center for refugees for a year. At the end of 1943 it housed 80 mothers with babies and more than 150 single children aged 6 to 10.

After working in Geneva, she helped set up and run the Neukirch educational center in Neukirch an der Thur in the canton of Thurgau. Then Näf moved to Denmark, where she ran a farm. In the winter of 1953/54 she worked again in Lambaréné.

In 1987 she returned to the Glarnerland, where she looked after the sick and the elderly until she died.

Honor

Movies

  • Anne-Marie Im Hof-Piguet: Juste parmis les nations. Switzerland 2009, 50 min.
  • La filière. Switzerland 1987, 37 min., Directed by Jacqueline Veuve .

literature

  • Anne-Marie Im Hof-Piguet : La filière en France occupée, 1942–1944 . Editions de la Thièle, Yverdon-les-Bains 1985, ISBN 2-8283-0019-6 .
    • German: 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 .
  • Sebastian Steiger: The children of La Hille Castle . Brunnen-Verlag, Basel 1992, ISBN 978-3-7655-1540-8 .
  • Antonia Schmidlin: Another Switzerland. Helpers, children of war and humanitarian policy 1933–1942. Chronos Verlag, Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-905313-04-9 .
  • Vera Friedländer: The children of La Hille. Escape and rescue from deportation . Construction Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-7466-8106-5
  • Antonia Schmidlin: Rösli Näf. One of the brave, heroic women our homeland looks up to with pride . In: Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.): Forgotten women. Humanitarian aid to children and official refugee policy 1917–1948. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2010, ISBN 3-7965-2695-0 .
  • Yagil Limore: Chrétiens et Juifs sous Vichy (1940-1944). Sauvetage et désobéissance civile. Foreword by Yehuda Bauer. 2005, ISBN 978-2-204-07585-5 .
  • 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. ^ Antonia Schmidlin: Rösli Näf. One of the brave, heroic women our homeland looks up to with pride . In: Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.): Forgotten women. Humanitarian aid to children and official refugee policy 1917–1948.
  2. ↑ History of Nursing: Rösli Näf (1911–1996) ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 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 / www.geschichte-der-pflege.info
  3. ↑ Rösli Näf on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
  4. ^ Anne-Marie Im Hof-Piguet: Juste parmis les nations at artfilm.ch .
personal data
SURNAME Näf, Rösli
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Naef, Rosa
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss nurse
DATE OF BIRTH 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Glarus
DATE OF DEATH 1996
Place of death Glarus