Castagné Alain & Rosa

Castagne, Alain Castagne, Rosa File 3975 By the end of 1940, several Jewish families had fled from the occupied zone to Gramat, in the département of Lot in southwestern France. In September 1943, gendarmes arrived in Gramat with an arrest warrant for Simha Goldstein. While they were pounding on his door, Goldstein escaped through a window and fled to the home of his neighbors, the Castagnes, where he hid. The gendarmes called off their unsuccessful search and Goldstein returned to his family. On May 11, 1944, a military unit of the Das Reich division entered Gramat and instigated a brutal roundup to arrest and deport all Jews in the village. That very day, Rosa and Alain Castagne decided to help their neighbors, the Goldsteins, by offering to shelter their entire family. Eleven Jewish residents of Gramat were arrested in the Das Reich operation and sent to Drancy, later to be deported to Auschwitz. That night, Simha Goldstein and his son Marcel left Gramat and joined a French Resistance unit. Mme Goldstein and the rest of the family stayed with the Castagnes until the village was liberated in August 1944. Both the rescuers and the rescued faced great danger. On August 30, 1988, Yad Vashem recognized Alain and Rosa Castagne as Righteous Among the Nations.