{"id":16709,"date":"2024-06-17T10:24:09","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T08:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/venissieux-camp\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T16:10:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T14:10:56","slug":"venissieux-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/venissieux-camp\/","title":{"rendered":"V\u00e9nissieux Camp"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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August 1942: To meet the Nazis\u2019 demands, 10,000 foreign Jews were rounded up in the so-called \u201cfree\u201d zone. On August 26, more than a thousand of them were rounded up and held in an army camp in V\u00e9nissieux (a suburb of Lyon), awaiting transfer to the Drancy transit camp. Resistance organizations managed to save 108 children and a few adults. <\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In V\u00e9nissieux, 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 Rh\u00f4ne, Is\u00e8re, and Ain. Their transfer to Drancy, the hub of the deportation operation, scheduled for late August, was preceded by a \u201cscreening\u201d process\u2014that is, the opportunity granted by the Vichy regime to remove children under the age of 15 and seriously ill individuals from the deportation lists. <\/p>

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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\u2026); the \u00c9claireurs Isra\u00e9lites de France (EIF, represented by Claude Gutmann); \u201cAmiti\u00e9 chr\u00e9tienne\u201d (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. <\/p>

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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 \u201cAmiti\u00e9 chr\u00e9tienne.\u201d 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 \u201cAmiti\u00e9 chr\u00e9tienne,\u201d they left V\u00e9nissieux accompanied by Charles Lederman\u2014provisionally appointed as the association\u2019s representative\u2014 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. <\/p>

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Faced with a fait accompli, he was therefore compelled to protect Father Chaillet in the name of a \u201ccompelling moral obligation.\u201d In the hours that followed, the police launched a manhunt for the children, but the Resistance responded with a leaflet: \u201cYou will not get the children.\u201d Most of the children were then placed with families under new identities. The majority of the parents (545) were gassed. <\/p>

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This extraordinary rescue was made possible thanks to \u201ca chain of Jews and non-Jews who banded together to prevent a crime against humanity\u201d (Serge Klarsfeld).<\/p>

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The \u201cNight of V\u00e9nissieux\u201d marked a decisive turning point for the OSE and several other Jewish organizations, which accelerated the establishment of their clandestine networks for rescuing children.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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References:<\/strong><\/p>

\u2014 Val\u00e9rie Portheret, 2020, *You Won\u2019t Have<\/em> Children*. Published by <\/em>XO Documents. <\/p>

\u2014 Val\u00e9rie Perthuis-Portheret, 2012, August 1942: Lyon Against Vichy. The Rescue of All the Jews from the V\u00e9nissieux Camp. Editions <\/em>Lyonnaises d\u2019Art et d\u2019Histoire.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

August 1942: To meet the Nazis\u2019 demands, 10,000 foreign Jews were rounded up in the so-called \u201cfree\u201d zone. On August 26, more than a thousand of them were rounded up and held in an army camp in V\u00e9nissieux (a suburb of Lyon), awaiting transfer to the Drancy transit camp. Resistance organizations managed to save 108 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[],"salle":[168],"source":[],"zone-geo":[],"class_list":["post-16709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","salle-9-1-a-coordinated-effort"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16712,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16709\/revisions\/16712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16709"},{"taxonomy":"salle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/salle?post=16709"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=16709"},{"taxonomy":"zone-geo","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/zone-geo?post=16709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}