Argenti Cyrille

Argenti, Father Cyrille File 4592 In late 1942, even before the Germans occupied southern France, the Jewish organization OSE functioned not only as a health assistance agency and an administrator of children’s homes, but also as an underground rescue network. The OSE clinics were legally sanctioned and operated with a police permit, but they also supplied some of the “visitors” with forged papers and referrals to hiding places. In early November 1943, seventeen-year-old Claude Spiero and his mother went to the OSE clinic in Marseilles. The Spieros were Jews without French citizenship who had been interned at the Les Milles detention camp together with hundreds of other Jews who had fled to southern France. After their escape from the camp, Spiero and her son were in urgent need of papers and shelter. The OSE provided forged citizenship papers and referred them to Cyrille Argenti, an eighteen-year-old who, as an OSE volunteer, transported Jews from Marseilles to villages with institutions and individuals willing to “adopt” them. Argenti was a fervent Christian and helped place Jews in hiding places because of his personal conviction that, as a believing Christian and a human being, it was his duty to help the persecuted. Argenti’s assignment was to deliver Claude and his mother to the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and direct them to the Protestant minister, André Trocmé (q.v.), the spiritual leader of the congregations in the area and the initiator of rescue work in his community. Argenti’s mission was extremely dangerous because the railway station at Marseilles and the trains themselves were under close surveillance. The Gestapo patrolled around the clock in search of Jews, and anyone who was caught helping Jews risked sharing the Jews’ fate of deportation. Nevertheless, Argenti escorted Spiero and her son by train from Marseilles to Voult-sur-Rhône, a small town on the Rhône River about 180 kilometers north of Marseilles. They spent the night in thewaiting room until another train took them to Le Chambon, about fifty kilometers to the northwest. After passing through document control, they reached their destination safely. From Le Chambon, Argenti delivered his wards to a nearby village recommended by Trocmé . Only then did he return to Marseilles. Argenti subsequently became a priest and professor of theology in the Greek Orthodox Church. On March 1, 1990, Yad Vashem recognized Father Cyrille Argenti as Righteous