Rulland Hélène ; Sister: Simone

Rulland, Hélène Rulland, Simone File 2778 Hélène Rulland and her sister Simone, who lived in Castres (Tarn), risked their lives to save Jewish children and adolescents during the occupation. They worked with the Jewish Scout movement (EIF) and its underground organization, La Sixième. In the summer of 1942, a wave of large-scale deportations swept through France. The Jewish Scouts began dispersing the children from their shelter in Moissac, (département of Tarn-et-Garonne) and sought to help the refugee children in every possible way. In June 1942, thirty girls aged sixteen to twenty came to the Scouts headquarters in Moissac. They were the daughters of Jewish emigrés who had come to France after 1936 and thus not French citizens. During the occupation, they had been interned in the detention camps at Gurs and later Rivesaltes. The OSE had managed to remove these youngsters from the camps at the last moment before they were to be deported, and they were housed at the Scouts headquarters. Among the girls in the group were Irène Israël, Berthe Manela, and Annie Weil. In August 1942, the girls, disguised as scouts, were taken to a hiding place near Vabre, a mountain village near Castres. In charge of the girls was Hélène Rulland, a French woman about thirty years of age and a former scout leader. She was known to the leaders of La Sixième, who had asked her to find a location for a scout camp and to make sure that the girls had food and good care. Hélène Rulland rented a building in the mountains near Vabre from a manufacturer, and there she organized the scout camp that lasted about five weeks, until late September 1942. It was a difficult undertaking because the girls did not have ration cards and had to be provided with them illegally. Furthermore, autumn in the mountains was very cold and the girls were inadequately dressed. While the girls stayed in the camp, members of La Sixième looked for Christian families to shelter them. Finally, using borderrunners, they managed to smuggle most of them into Switzerland. Hélène’s sister Simone, a pharmacist, gave the La Sixième activists significant assistance by providing medicine for the members of a resistance group of Jewish Scouts that operated in the vicinity of Vabre. Her pharmacy also served as a mail drop for members of the underground and all the Jewish youngsters who were hiding in the area. Despite the many dangers that they faced between late 1942 and the summer of 1944, the Rulland sisters waited for the train from Toulouse every evening and went home only after they were certain that no one on the train was an operative of La Sixième who needed help. In all their activities, their only motives were humanitarianism and a wish to help; they sought no material reward for their actions. On January 5, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized Hélène Rulland and Simone Rulland as Righteous Among the Nations.