Renee Farny

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Renée Farny, Saint-Cergues
Children's colony Les Feux follets in Saint-Cergues-les-Voirons (2014)

Renée Farny (born October 10, 1919 in Villedômer, Indre-et-Loire , France ; † March 1, 1979 in Antibes ) was a Swiss social worker . She was a French-Swiss citizen and had the Swiss citizenship of Unterlangenegg in the canton of Bern and La Chaux-de-Fonds .

Life

Renée Farny grew up as the daughter of the Swiss director Alfred Farny from 1921 to 1939 in Paris, where she also studied. In 1939 she spent a year in Châteauroux and from December 1940 worked in Toulouse for the Swiss Working Group for War Damaged Children (SAK) (from 1942 Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross SRK). There she worked as a social worker with the convoy escort, in the children's colony La Hille , the Maternité suisse d'Elne and the internment camps Argelès and Récébédou (a district of Portet-sur-Garonne ).

In September 1941 she was employed in the children's colony “Les Feux follets” in Saint-Cergues- les-Voirons as a teacher and deputy to the director Germaine Hommel , where she stayed until she left for Switzerland in December 1943. The house was built in the 1930s by Italian anti-fascists who fled to Annemasse and Geneva to serve as a holiday colony for their children.

The village of Saint-Cergues is located in the immediate vicinity of 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, Renée Farny , Germaine Hommel and Marthe Bouvard (the laundry managers) had agreed to their willingness at the request of Rösli Näf, risking their lives if numerous children (including young people at risk from the Château de la Hille colony ) and adults cross the border illegally to help to save them from deportation to the 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. Even after she was transferred by the SRK Children's Aid Committee after an unsuccessful attempt to escape due to a violation of the SRK's principle of neutrality in February 1943 - together with Rösli Näf - she continued with the illegal escape assistance.

When the Germans occupied the region in September 1943, the border crossing was monitored day and night. Renée Farny made her last illegal border crossing in December 1943 when she was visiting her sick father in Switzerland.

Honor

  • In 1992, Renée Farny and Germaine Hommel were posthumously awarded the « Righteous Nations » 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. Schwabe Verlag, 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 .
  • 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. 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. ↑ Renée Farny on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
personal data
SURNAME Farny, Renee
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss nurse
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Villedômer , Indre-et-Loire department , France
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 1979
Place of death Antibes