August 1942: To meet the Nazis’ demands, 10,000 foreign Jews were rounded up in the so-called “free” zone. On August 26, more than a thousand of them were rounded up and held in an army camp in Vénissieux (a suburb of Lyon), awaiting transfer to the Drancy transit camp. Resistance organizations managed to save 108 children and a few adults.
In Vénissieux, in the suburbs of Lyon, a camp was hastily set up in an army barracks to house more than a thousand Jews rounded up in the departments of Rhône, Isère, and Ain. Their transfer to Drancy, the hub of the deportation operation, scheduled for late August, was preceded by a “screening” process—that is, the opportunity granted by the Vichy regime to remove children under the age of 15 and seriously ill individuals from the deportation lists.
Gilbert Lesage, from the Social Services for Foreigners, is a member of this screening committee. He alerted officials at the OSE (Dr. Joseph Weill, medical director of the OSE; Charles Lederman, director of the OSE in Lyon; Georges Garel…); the Éclaireurs Israélites de France (EIF, represented by Claude Gutmann); “Amitié chrétienne” (Father Glasberg, representing Father Chaillet), and Madeleine Barrot of the Protestant organization CIMADE, asking them to come and help him ensure compliance with the exemption clauses.
All night long, members of these organizations fought against the collaborationist Vichy government. But to save the children from eventual deportation, they had to operate clandestinely and convince the parents to relinquish their parental rights to “Amitié chrétienne.” It was therefore essential to meet with them, one by one, to have them sign this transfer of custody. Despite the screams, the tears, and the suicide attempts by some parents, 108 children were separated from their parents and smuggled out of the camp. Officially handed over to “Amitié chrétienne,” they left Vénissieux accompanied by Charles Lederman—provisionally appointed as the association’s representative— Georges Garel, and several social workers; they were then taken for the night to an EIF facility and dispersed the next day among various religious institutions under the protection of the Archbishop of Lyon, Monsignor Gerlier.
Faced with a fait accompli, he was therefore compelled to protect Father Chaillet in the name of a “compelling moral obligation.” In the hours that followed, the police launched a manhunt for the children, but the Resistance responded with a leaflet: “You will not get the children.” Most of the children were then placed with families under new identities. The majority of the parents (545) were gassed.
This extraordinary rescue was made possible thanks to “a chain of Jews and non-Jews who banded together to prevent a crime against humanity” (Serge Klarsfeld).
The “Night of Vénissieux” marked a decisive turning point for the OSE and several other Jewish organizations, which accelerated the establishment of their clandestine networks for rescuing children.
References:
— Valérie Portheret, 2020, *You Won’t Have Children*. Published by XO Documents.
— Valérie Perthuis-Portheret, 2012, August 1942: Lyon Against Vichy. The Rescue of All the Jews from the Vénissieux Camp. Editions Lyonnaises d’Art et d’Histoire.
