Romanet André & Simone

Romanet, André Romanet, Simone File 7265 André Romanet and his wife, Simone, taught in the village school of Salles-en-Beaujolais (département of Rhône). André was also the municipal secretary, and a representative of the Secours National, a welfare office established by the Vichy regime. The Romanets were close to the Resistance and had helped children in danger more than once. In the summer of 1943, Pierrette Lalou, who worked for the OSE, a Jewish organization, contacted them. The Romanets agreed to take part in a rescue network for children sponsored by the archbishop of Lyons. As André Romanet later said, “It was unbearable for us to see people cast out and massacred not for anything they might have done but because they were Jews, Gypsies, or others. It was even more unbearable for us that anyone could kill children, for they were our entire concern as teachers.” From April 1943 on, three or four children reached the village each week, brought by Resistance people from Lyons. André Romanet received them and brought them on his bicycle to peasant families in other villages in the vicinity. Sometimes, the children spent a few days in the Romanets’ home until they could be placed with foster families nearby. After the peasants took the children into their homes, Romanet stayed in touch with them and gave the foster families a small sum of money, about 10 francs per day, to cover expenses. The Romanets took care of about sixty children in this fashion, despite the risk this entailed for him. After the occupation, the Romanets established an orphanage for the hundreds of children in the area whose parents had vanished or had died. Over time, this institution served nearly one thousand young refugees, mostly Jews. The children who were saved through the Romanets’ efforts included Samuel Nahum, Jacques Tchoukriel and his sister Arlette, and Suzanne Coppermann and her brother, among many others. André Romanet, who devoted his life to education, later becamea professor of education at the University of Nanterre. Commenting on the lessons of the occupation, he said, “Today, as the world seems to have forgotten every human ideal, and when violence follows hatred and engenders new hatreds, it seems to me more necessary than ever to believe in the bonds among all people and in the immeasurable richness of their diversity.” On September 8, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized André Romanet and his wife Simone as Righteous Among the Nations.