Guillaume Marthe

Murat, Mother Marie-Angélique Lafarge, Marie Guillaume, Irene (Sister Marthe de la Croix) Guillaume, Marthe File 6968 Marie-Angélique Murat was Mother Superior of the Sainte-Marguerite convent in Clermont-Ferrand (capital of the département of Puy-de-Dôme). Nadine, Régine, and Janine Fain, sisters from Paris, and Claudine, Janine, and Marianne Goetschel, sisters from Limoges, found shelter there in the beginning of the 1942-43 school year. The Fain girls reached the convent through the mediation of Msgr. Gabriel Piguet, Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand (recognized as Righteous Among the Nations). In addition to the Jewish girls, daughters of Resistance fighters also had taken refuge in the convent. Marie Lafarge, the headmistress of the school, together with the Mother Superior, ensured everyone’s safety, displayed warmth toward the Jewish refugees and protected them from harm. Whenever Germans raided the convent, the concierge, following a prearranged procedure, sounded a bell in the “sensitive” classrooms. Each classroom had a second door that opened onto a side street. Whenever the teachers heard the bells, they let the Jewish girls and the daughters of the Resistance fighters escape. The other students did not know the girls’ secret. In their postwar testimony, the survivors recalled the warmth, devotion, and tolerance lavished by the Mother Superior, the headmistress, and the teachers, as well as the assistance they provided in overcoming the hardships and terrors of the war. During Easter vacation in 1943, the school was closed for holidays. Since the Fain girls had nowhere to go, one of the sisters, Soeur Marthe de la Croix, took them to her sister Marthe Guillaume in La Tour d’Auvergne. The Guillaumes' relatives told Yad Vashem that Marthe Guillaume, who owned a pharmacy, hid other Jewish girls for long periods until the liberation. In the summer of 1943, after M. Fain was arrested and deported, Mme Fain removed the girls from the convent, and together they moved to the département of Lot, where they found a hideout. The Goetschel girls remained in the convent until the area was liberated. On March 12, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Mother Marie-Angélique Murat, Marthe Guillaume, Iréne Guillaume & Marie Lafarge as Righteous Among the Nations.