Théomir Devaux

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Théomir Devaux (born March 17, 1885 in Castillon (Calvados) , † January 28, 1967 in Chaville ) was a French Catholic priest, supporter of the Resistance and editor of a magazine that campaigned for Christian-Jewish dialogue. During the Second World War he saved hundreds of Jewish children from deportation in German- occupied France .

Life

He entered the Order of Notre Dame de Sion in Paris in 1911 , where he was director from 1925 to 1937. At the same time he was a priest of the parish church of St. Sulpice in Paris.

In 1928 he founded the magazine La question d'Israël , which campaigned for a rapprochement between the Christian and Jewish religions. In addition, he organized seminars on various topics of Judaism, in which there was an exchange of ideas between writers and Christian and Jewish personalities and which were characterized by an atmosphere of mutual understanding and respect. In 1940 his magazine was banned by the Gestapo because several articles had openly criticized anti-Semitism .

After the German occupation of France , the first Jewish families came to Father Devaux at the end of 1941 and asked for their children to be protected. Together with the religious sister Francia de Linares and several other courageous escape helpers, he then mediated and organized the placement of the Jewish children in Christian host families, especially in smaller towns in the countryside in the Sarthe department and in boarding schools run by the church.

After the Rafle du Vélodrome d'Hiver (raid of the winter cycle track) in Paris in July 1942, the number of children brought to him rose sharply. Although 13,000 Jews were arrested in the raid, thousands of Jewish residents in Paris managed to escape and go into hiding in time.

The accommodation and boarding of the children, the procurement of false personal documents and the organization of the trip to the host families in the country presented an immense challenge on some days, as sometimes up to 35 children per day in the residence of the order in the 6th arrondissement of Paris were brought.

Despite surveillance and several house searches by the Gestapo, thanks to the secrecy of the small group of his helpers, he managed to save over 400 children undetected from deportation to concentration camps by the end of the Second World War .

After the end of the war, he was primarily concerned with studies of Jewish history and its relationship to early Christianity. Théomir Devaux spent the last years of his life in a retirement home in Chaville . He died on January 28, 1967.

On September 5, 1996, he was posthumously honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for his selfless work in rescuing Jewish children .

background

One of the Jewish children who turned to Father Théomir Devaux for help in 1943 was twelve-year-old Hans Helmut Michel. The son of a German doctor had fled to France with his mother and sister and had already escaped arrest twice. He was given the code name Jean Bonnet and was placed with the Carmelite Father Père Jacques in the boarding school of the Petit Collège in Avon (Seine-et-Marne) . After involuntary betrayal, he was discovered there by the Gestapo and murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944 . He became known through the multiple award-winning feature film Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder by director Louis Malle .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Théomir Devaux on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
personal data
SURNAME Devaux, Théomir
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French priest
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Castillon (Calvados)
DATE OF DEATH January 28, 1967
Place of death Chaville