Steiger Sebastian

Steiger, Sébastien In early 1943, the young teacher Sébastien Steiger was sent from Switzerland to work in Château de la Hille, a Swiss Red Cross orphanage in a village in the département of Ariège. Steiger taught arithmetic and French in the elementary grades at the orphanage and also took the children on regular outings in the vicinity, taught them songs, and told them stories. Although he was in his early twenties, Steiger was a surrogate father to many of the young children, as is seen in the testimony of his former pupils, including Rita Lavi, Esther Hocherman, Frida Wald, and Marianne Bolleg. These activities were legal, so he did not endanger himself. This was not the case, however, when, in late 1943, he gave his Swiss passport to a Jew named Walter Kamlet, after changing the photograph. Kamlet survived by using Steiger’s passport to escape to Switzerland. Steiger himself lived in occupied France for many months without his passport. When he returned to his home in Switzerland the police detained him until he could prove his identity. After the war, Steiger remained active on behalf of Jews, establishing an association to assist Jewish children and meeting in Israel with his former wartime students from Château de la Hille. On March 11, 1993, Yad Vashem recognized Sébastien Steiger as Righteous Among the Nations.