Ribière Germaine

Ribière, Germaine File 367 Germaine Ribière was a young student who lived with her parents in Limoges (Haute-Vienne). During the German occupation, she abandoned her studies, left home, and devoted herself to saving Jewish children. Ribière, a devout Catholic, joined the rescue networks in which clergymen such as Father Roger Braun (q.v.), Father Pierre Chaillet (q.v.) and Bishop Jules Saliège (q.v.) were involved. Ribière made contact with Jewish families living in France and, after getting their permission, arranged hiding places for their children with non-Jewish families and in convents. The children owed their survival to her actions. In 1940, Ribière escorted the two children from the Domb family, who lived in Paris, over the demarcation line into the Vichy zone, where she found a Christian institution willing to hide them until the end of the occupation. Ribière was an activist in the Amitié Chrétienne, which was established in Lyons in 1941 to help Jewish and other victims of the Vichy and occupation decrees. On January 27, 1943, Ribière attended this organization’s emergency board meeting in the home of the Protestant minister Roland de Pury (q.v.) in Lyons. The meeting planned how to warn Jews, who were coming to collect forged papers at the organization’s offices on Ste.-Catherine Street, not to enter the office. The Gestapo had set a trap for anyone who entered. It was decided that early the next morning, Ribière would dress up as a cleaning woman and spend the day scrubbing the stairs and other parts of the building. This afforded her an opportunity to warn every Jew who arrived. The operation succeeded beyond all hopes. Not a single Jew was caught. A year later, when the Allied forces liberated the concentration camps in Germany, Ribière joined a team led by Yves Farge, the High Commissioner of the Republic in Lyons, and spent several months aiding the survivors. After this, she completed her studies and was certified as a social worker. As partof her work and because of the trust she had earned among French Jewry, Ribière volunteered in 1953 to rescue Robert and Gérald Finaly, two Jewish orphans who had been baptized by the director of the nursery where they stayed during the war. After the war, the director refused to give them back to their family and they were brought into Spain illegally and hidden in a convent there. Ribière traveled to Spain, located the children, brought them back to France, and delivered them to their aunt and uncle in Israel. Germaine Ribière passed away in Paris on November 20, 1999 at the age of 82. On July 18, 1967, Yad Vashem recognized Germaine Ribière as Righteous Among the Nations.