Sentou Fernand & Yvette

Sentou, Fernand Sentou, Yvette File 4828 In October 1940, seventeen-year-old Hannelore Trautman, a native of the town of Karlsruhe in Germany, was incarcerated with her parents and younger brother in the detention camp at Gurs and later in the Rivesaltes camp in southern France, not far from the Spanish border. After twenty months in detention, Hannelore, her brother, and her friend Renée Stein were released through the intervention of the Jewish organization OSE. They were lodged at a farm school in Charry, near Moissac, under the auspices of the French Jewish Scout movement. There they received the bitter news that their parents had been deported to the east. After spending a few months in Charry, they were warned of an impending raid by the local gendarmerie and fled to the nearby forest. They spent several weeks in the open air, in the cold and rain and then were sent to the Château de Bègue in Cazaubon, in the département of Gers, which was run by the Amitié Chrétienne, and admitted Jewish refugees who had been freed from French camps. When Victor Glasberg, the head of the institute, was arrested in December 1943, they had to flee once more. They were sheltered temporarily by Fernand Sentou, the mayor of Cazaubon, who provided forged identification cards with which they could find a safer refuge. The risk taken by Fernand and Yvette Sentou in sheltering the young fugitives was very great because the area swarmed with Germans and informers, and surprise inspections were routine. On January 2, 1991, Yad Vashem recognized Fernand and Yvette Sentou as Righteous Among the Nations.