Small town police chief in France to be named “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem for saving Jews during the Holocaust

The town of Vabre, France. Photo: T2fr-nieme / Wikimedia.

A Nazi-era police chief in a rural Protestant town in France must be declared “righteous among the nations” by Yad Vashem because of his efforts to save Jews targeted by collaborationist forces during World War II.

At the time, France had been conquered by Nazi Germany and was ruled by the pro-Nazi puppet regime of Vichy, which helped the Germans round up the Jews and send them to their deaths.

As the BBC The small town of Vabre reported on Saturday has proven to be an exception to the general mood of collaboration and anti-Semitism. Led by the pastor of the city Robert Cook, it united against the Vichy regime and became a center of activity for the Resistance. In addition, the city has a long history of business relations with Jews in the Parisian textile industry, many of whom find refuge there.

Partly because of the memory of their ancestors’ own persecution as Protestant Huguenots in the 1600s, the city’s citizens sympathize with the Jews driven out by the Germans and their collaborators, a phenomenon that peaked in 1942.

The prefect of police Hubert Landes took the lead. After his men participated in a mass arrest of Jews in another town, the Landes decided never to allow such a thing to happen again.

A year later, as another raid was underway, Landes warned the targeted Jews, and many of them went into hiding or joined the Resistance – including a Jewish Resistance group in the region, called the Compagnie Marc Haguenau.

In 2015, Vabre itself was named “City of the Righteous” by Yad Vashem. Henceforth Landes himself will be appointed righteous among the nations, joining Pastor Cook, who has already been recognized as such.

The BBC said Vabre had gone to great lengths to remember his resistance. City citizen Catherine Vieu-Charier is described as having a Hebrew tattoo, and she and her late companion Henri Malberg have assiduously advocated for a successful campaign to commemorate the names of the Jewish children of Paris who were murdered during the Holocaust.