Cazals Marcellin

Cazals, Marcellin File 5805 When the war began, Sgt. Marcellin Cazals was commander of the gendarmerie in Malzieu-Ville, in the département of Lozère. Staunchly opposed to the Vichy government and its race laws from the outset, Cazals joined the underground to resist the policies of both the Vichy regime and the occupier. He helped the residents of Malzieu who had settled there during the occupation, including 200 Jews who had fled from the occupied zone. Cazals warned Jews who were about to be arrested, enabling them to escape before the police came. None of these Jews were arrested. In February 1943, the Lozère Préfecture ordered the gendarmerie to arrest all Jewish men aged 18-55 who were registered with the police. With the help of several associates, Cazals forewarned the Jews in this age bracket of the exact day and hour that his gendarmes would come. When Cazals and his policemen made the rounds of the targeted Jews’ houses, no one was home. Chaim Edelhertz was a Jewish tailor born in Poland. In late 1942, after much wandering and hardship, he found shelter in Malzieu together with his wife and their two young daughters. When Cazals and the police came to the Edelhertz’s home, his wife stated that her husband had gone to Clermont to work. Although as an alien he was forbidden to leave home without a police permit, the gendarmes overlooked this infraction and pretended to search for him. Afterward they told their superiors that the wanted man had slipped away. In the summer of 1943, Cazals again warned Mme Edelhertz of an impending police visit. She told the gendarmes that her husband had vanished after finding work in Nice. The police merely asked the neighbors to confirm their neighbor’s disappearance in writing. The gendarmes were also searching for a Jew called Bromberg. When they came to his home, the women in his family gathered and made a commotion. M. Bromberg seized the opportunity to leap out a rear window; if the police noticed him, they madeno effort to arrest him. After these events, Cazals informed his superiors, “There are no Jews in Malzieu.” Cazals was anonymously denounced, investigated for his connections with the underground but able to persuade the interrogators of his innocence. On November 17, 1993, Yad Vashem recognized Marcellin Cazals as Righteous Among the Nations.