Bedane Albert

Bedane, Albert Gustave Albert Gustave Bedane, (b.1893) a British subject of French origin and a veteran of World War I, was a resident of the Isle of Jersey, one of the British Channel Islands occupied by the Germans from the of middle 1940 until May 1945. He was a physiotherapist and had established a clinic at his home, in St. Helier. He had a wife, Clara, and a daughter, Valerie May. Bedane sheltered a Dutch Jewish woman, Mary Erica Richardson in his home and clinic from June 1943 until the end of the war. Bedane fed her from food he received from his farmer patients in payment for his professional services. Richardson spent months living in a tiny stone cellar, and was then moved to a curtained room on an upper floor of the house. Bedane also temporarily hid a number of Russian forced laborers and a Jersey man, Francis Le Sueur, who was on the run from the Germans, as well as an escaped French prisoner of war. Mary Erica Richardson’s husband, Captain Edmund Richardson, was not Jewish and the couple lived in St. Helier. Most of Jersey’s prewar Jewish population fled before the 1940 German invasion. Twelve islanders were registered as Jews and deported to death camps. Richardson went into hiding on June 25, 1943. According to Bedane, earlier that day, Mrs. Richardson had been questioned by the Germans and was allowed to go home and collect her jewels and valuables, because she was told she was to be sent to “a very nice, special camp where she would be well looked after and she would need her best things with her.” According to Bedane, during the time she was hiding at his home, Richardson changed her hairstyle, wore dark glasses and occasionally sat out in the garden. She escaped detection by returning to the secret cellar when the house was searched by the Germans. Bedane was well aware of the risks he took by offering her refuge. Francis Le Sueur, hidden by Bedane in 1944 testified that Bedane had sheltered Richardson for two and a half years. He remembered playing cards with his fellow guests in the cellar. He emphasized that Bedane must have known all that time that he would be shot if caught. When the war was over, it seemed that the anxiety of the war period took its toll on Bedane. He was hospitalized and diagnosed as suffering from the delayed effects of chronic stress. The Richardson couple left the island immediately after the war. Frederick Cohen, the President of the Jersey Jewish congregation brought the story of Richardson’s rescue to light in his book "The Jews in the Channel Islands during the German Occupation 1940- 1945". An eyewitness account is Francis Le Sueur’s book, Shadow of the Swastika, published in 1990. Bedane is mentioned in Madeleine Bunting’s book The Model Occupation – The Channel Islands under German Rule 1940-1945 (1996), in a group of 20 islanders who were recognized by the Soviet Union in May 1965, for their bravery for sheltering or feeding escaped Russian slave laborers. On December 21, 1999, Albert Gustave Bedane was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. The medal was presented to his grandson in London and is on permanent display at the Maritime Museum in St Helier, Jersey . Albert Bedane's house at 45 Roseville Street no longer exists, but a plaque was unveiled on the site to celebrate his remarkable story.