Pasqualini Paul & Anna (Seaume)

Pasqualini, Anna Pasqualini, Paul Thevenet Aimé Thevenet Andrée Paul Pasqualini, an engineer, and his wife Anna, a school teacher, lived in a flat on the premises of the cardboard factory Paul had established in 1936 in the Valfuret suburb of Saint Etienne (Loire). A keen supporter of General de Gaulle, Paul immediately joined the Resistance. When the Germans occupied the south of France in November 1942, Pierre Gomet, a school teacher who was a friend of the Pasqualinis, asked them to hide the Auslanders - a Jewish doctor and his wife. Marcel and Gertie Auslander had been born in Austria but were naturalized French citizens. They were living in Saint Bonnet le Château not far from Valfuret and Auslander had many patients in the region. However, the Vichy regime enacted a series of anti-Jewish laws, stripping Marcel of his right to practice medicine. It also deprived the couple of their French citizenship. When they were asked to take in the Jewish couple, Paul and Anna agreed to take them in even though eight people were already living in their spacious house. Its isolated location inside the factory compound made hiding the newcomers easier. Anna had to work hard to be able to feed all these people at a time of war and food shortages. On October 9, 1943, Gestapo agents came to arrest the Pasqualini, who had been betrayed together with the members of his network by a double agent. He let himself be taken without attempting to resist in order allow the people he was protecting – the Auslanders and a young man who had refused to be drafted for compulsory labor in Germany – to escape through the park next to the factory which led to the countryside. Paul Pasqualini was incarcerated at Fort Montluc and later in Compiègne, whence he was deported to Mauthausen. He narrowly escaped death. Following her husband's arrest and fearing another search of her home, the badly shaken Anna Pasqualini suggested that the Auslanders leave and hide elsewhere. TheJewish couple left the same evening. Gertie went to stay with their acquaintances and former patients of her husband, Aimé and Andrée Thevenet, in a small hamlet near Estivareilles. Marcel first wanted to join the resistance, but returned to his wife several weeks later. Aimé was a farmer, his wife was the school teacher of the Viviers primary school, and they had an apartment in the school building. As Marcel Auslander had been a physician in that region, everybody in the area knew him and his wife who often accompanied him on his rounds. Hence rescuers and rescued had to be very careful that no one would suspect the Auslanders' presence in the village. They stayed in the Thevenets' guestroom, which Gertie Auslander described in her testimony as "our safe haven as well as our prison". Fearing denouncement, they would keep away from the windows, speak softly so that they would not be noticed by the students. Aimé and Andrée Thevenet shared their food with their wards and saw to all their needs. In the spring of 1944 Marcel Auslander was finally able to join the resistance, his wife stayed in hiding. When St. Etienne was liberated, Gertie Auslander returned to her home, where she was soon joined by her husband. The couple maintained a warm relationship with the two couples who had saved them. When Paul Pasqualini returned from Mauthausen in May 1945, Marcel Auslander devoted himself to nursing him back to health. In 1946 Gertie Auslander had a baby girl. The Pasqualinis who knew that the Auslanders' family had all been murdered in the Holocaust, visited her in hospital. When Andrée Thevenet reached retirement age, she and her husband moved back to Aimé's hometown, where several years later the childless couple passed away. On 26 May 1999 Yad Vashem recognized Paul & Anna Pasqualini and Aimé and Andrée Thevenet as Righteous Among the Nations.