Synnestvedt Alice

Resch-Synnestvedt, Alice During World War II, in France, the Norwegian Alice Resch known as “Miss Resch,” worked for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization, and helped rescue many Jewish children. She was active in humanitarian aid given to the refugees and became close friends with the Danish Helga Holbek* who was in charge of supervising 16 institutions for refugee children in southern France. On the initiative of the OSE organization, at the end of February 1941, about 50 children were taken from the Gurs concentration camp to an orphanage in Aspet, near St. Gaudens, in the south of France. Resch and Holbek took care of the children until the fall of 1942, and then some of them were transferred to the Château de Larade orphanage in Toulouse. They also dispersed them to other orphanages in the area. Some of the children remained in the homes until May 1944. Many of them were smuggled out in the spring of 1944 to Switzerland. OSE employees, Ruth Lambert and Dora Wertzberg Amelan testified as to the important role of Resch in saving children during the war, confirming that Resch endangered her life many times. One of the survivors, Martin Eckstein testified that in Feb. 1943, Miss Resch personally accompanied him and three other children to the border, handing him documents that enabled him to enter Switzerland. Two brothers, Frederick Raymes and Menachem Mayer wrote about their war experiences, and the roles Resch and Holbek played in their survival, in the book Are the Trees in Bloom Over There?, (2001). Resch married Marcus Synnestvedt in 1943 and remained in France until 1962, when she was widowed and then moved to Norway. She wrote a book about her experiences during the war titled “Over the Highest Mountains: A memoir of Unexpected Heroism in France during World War II.” On July 13, 1982, Yad Vashem recognized Alice Resch-Synnestvedt as Righteous Among the Nations.