Weidner Johan

Weidner, Jean-Henri When the war broke out, Jean Weidner (b. 1912 in Brussels) was living in Paris and working for a commercial firm as an agent who traveled to southern France and Geneva. When the Netherlands, Belgium, and France were occupied, Weidner moved to Lyons, then in the unoccupied southern zone, where he continued his work. Weidner embarked on his humanitarian endeavors in Lyons, which had become a magnet for thousands of refugees from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Eastern European countries. Initially he assisted his compatriots, the Dutch, but as a devout Seventh Day Adventist, he became increasingly convinced of the need to help other unfortunates and fugitives. His assistance for small numbers of people developed into a ramified assistance network known as Dutch-Paris, with about three hundred people. This network, under his leadership, helped refugees by issuing forged papers, arranging hideouts, and, when it was possible, smuggling fugitives to neutral Spain and Switzerland. Dutch-Paris saved approximately 800 Jews and 200 non-Jews, including Allied airmen who had been downed over France, clerics whose assistance for Jews had provoked the displeasure of the occupation authorities, and political refugees. One of the Jewish families saved through Weidner’s assistance was the Rosenthals. M. Rosenthal had been interned in the camp at Châteauneuf-les-Bains, and his penniless wife and young son did not dare leave France. Weidner made a dentist’s appointment for Rosenthal in a town near the camp, from where he was cleverly “abducted.” He was bussed to Lyons, where Weidner waited for him with the fugitive’s wife and son and forged papers with which they were able to move to Switzerland. Weidner was on the Gestapo’s most-wanted list and was captured several times. He escaped each time. Once he leaped from a moving train, another time he swam across the Rhine, and a third time he jumped from a third-story window several minutes before he was to havebeen executed. On May 4, 1978, Yad Vashem recognized Jean-Henri Weidner as Righteous Among the Nations.