The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust by Gilbert Martin

Author:Gilbert, Martin [Gilbert, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2010-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE CHANNEL ISLANDS are British sovereign territory, but the largest island, Jersey, is only fifteen miles from the coast of France, and seventy-five miles from Britain. In June 1940 the islands were invaded by Germany and overrun within hours: they were the only part of Britain to come under Nazi rule. Even there, on the Atlantic Ocean, the Germans searched for Jews to deport to the death camps. When an arrest party came to the home of a Dutch-born Jewish woman, Mary Richardson (née Olvenich; she was married to a retired British sea captain, a non-Jew), she managed to escape out of the back of the building while her husband feigned senility to keep the Germans waiting at the front door.75 Mary Richardson was taken in and hidden by Albert Bedane, a physiotherapist, who had fought against the Germans in the First World War. Bedane hid her in his clinic in the island’s capital, St Helier.

Twelve islanders were registered as Jews during the war, and deported to the camps. Had it not been for Albert Bedane, Mary Richardson would have been the thirteenth. One of the many French forced labourers on the island, Francis Le Sueur, to whom Bedane had given shelter for two weeks, recalled that he had also ‘sheltered a Dutch Jewess in his home for two-and-a-half years and he must have known during all that time that he would be shot if he was caught. He took a long calculated risk and he must have needed a great deal of sustained courage.’76

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