Noël Lucien & Marie

Noël, Lucien Noël, Marie File 7842 Lucien Noël, a clerk for the Gaz de France company in Paris, lived with his wife, Marie, in Noisy le Grand (Seine Saint Denis). In the summer of 1943, the Noëls took in seven-year-old Clairette Vigder and her two-year-old brother Isidore, whose father had been arrested in January 1943, in his home in Paris, and deported. In March 1943, two French policemen visited their mother, who had been left with two young children, and told her that they would return in another two months or so, by which time her infant son would have reached his second birthday. Presumably, the police were sympathetic and hinting to Mme Vigder that she should flee in time. With the help of a Jewish resistance organization, Mme Vigder went into hiding in Paris and placed her two children with a foster family in Noisy le Grand. On two occasions, Isidore and Clairette were moved to different foster families after a worker with the resistance organization found that they were being treated harshly and deprived of food. Fate treated the children differently when they reached the Noëls, who cared for them devotedly and lovingly. Lucien Noël came to work in Paris every day and gave news of her children to their mother. She, in turn, sent them clothing, candy and letters. On September 26, 1943, Clairette wrote to her mother: “Zizi [Isidore’s nickname] is no longer out of touch as he used to be, and he is the way he was at home. He jumps, dances, sings, and is even starting to talk…. And now I have good news: Zizi and I are at a healthy weight—[Zizi] 13.050 naked, and me, 22.300.” The girl also attached a drawing of the Noëls’ house, in which Marie Noël, Zizi in a stroller, chickens, rabbits, and Clairette, herself, were positioned in the center. The children became ill in November 1943, and every week Marie brought them to a clinic at Saint-Louis Hospital in Paris. Then, for the duration of their treatment, they were entrusted to a Jewish organization thattook responsibility for their convalescence (q.v. Thèomir Devaux and Guilman). On July 23, 1998, Yad Vashem recognized Lucien and Marie Noël as Righteous Among the Nations.