Lachaise Lucien

Lachaise, Lucien File 7222 Lucien Lachaise owned a plastic factury in Caluire, on the outskirts of Lyons, and lived in the neighboring building. During the war, he had worked in a unit that prepared top-secret maps for antiaircraft defense. He was demobilized after the armistice and returned home. Because raw materials were not available following the occupation of France, Lachaise ceased production and converted his factory into rental apartments. When the Germans occupied southern France in 1942, officers who had learned about his military activities from a traitor came to visit him. They offered him a large sum to draw up maps for them, but he immediately refused. Despite the danger, Lachaise did not hesitate to rent several apartments to Jewish refugees who had fled to the vicinity of Lyons. Thanks to his friend and neighbor, Laurent Ziegler, who was a police officer, he knew what actions were planned againts the Jews. He warned his Jewish tenants about planned mass arrests and helped them find other places to hide when he could. Among Lachaise’s Jewish tenants were the Borodatys of Paris, who were referred through a friend, as well as the Grinspan, Gluck, and Polterman families. One Jewish family was referred to Lachaise by Father Spann, a Catholic priest who also helped arrange safe hideouts and obtained forged papers for several children in these families. The Nusbaum family, who were pursued by the Germans, approached Lachaise in 1942, and in the dead of night, he hid them in his brother-in-law’s isolated cabin in a neighboring village, where they remained for some time. Danger was always present in Lachaise’s apartment building. On one occasion, a company of German soldiers raided a building nearby. Just in time, Lachaise alerted the tenants to flee. Despite the peril, Huguette Borodaty, who was a girl during the occupation, recalled after the war the good cheer prevailing in the Lachaise building, which was tenanted almost exclusively by Jews.“M. Lachaise was a Gaullist from the start. He was a very discreet man, if not secretive. His wife was friendly and affable, a very good cook, and the smell of her cakes fill the entire courtyard. As I remember it, we lived in freedom in that man’s building.” On July 14, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Lucien Lachaise as Righteous Among the Nations.