Phillipe Jean

Phillipe, Jean File 6426 In late 1942, Jean Phillipe (b. 1905), after holding various positions in the army and the police since the 1930s, was named chief of police in the second arrondissement of Toulouse, the capital of the département of Haute-Garonne. He was also active in the underground network, Alliance, and prevented the arrest of many Resistance fighters. In January 1943, Phillipe was ordered to give the Germans a list of all Jews in his arrondissement. Phillipe categorically refused and tendered a letter of resignation, in which he vehemently denounced the Vichy government’s collaborationist policies. He added that he could not serve a regime that, in his opinion, did not represent the ideals of France, to which he had sworn allegiance. Phillipe stressed that Jews were no less entitled to life than were other citizens, including Prime Minister Pierre Laval himself. Immediately after submitting the letter, Phillipe went underground and continued to resist the occupiers from his new headquarters in Beaumont-de-Lomagne. An imprudent move on the part of his colleagues led to his arrest by the Gestapo on January 28, 1943. He was interrogated, tortured, imprisoned in Karlsruhe in Germany, and executed on March 1, 1944. Lucien David Fayman, a member of the Jewish underground network, La Sixième, testified after the war that police chief Jean Phillipe had helped him obtain forged identity papers with authentic police seals for delivery to young Jews whom La Sixième smuggled to Switzerland or placed in hiding places in France. On January 2, 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Jean Phillipe as Righteous Among the Nations.