Bonnet Albert & Marie-Louise (Giraud)& Marie-Louise (Telme)

Bonnet, Albert Bonnet, Marie-Louise Ricard, Eugène Ricard, Aline At 6am in early February 1944, a car screeched to a halt outside a building in Montéglin (Hautes-Alpes), where the families of brothers Ephraim and Isaac Cohen, Turkish immigrants, lived. Two Gestapo men ran up to the first floor and asked Isaac's wife Esther Cohen where Ephraim Cohen was (he had been informed upon by a local collaborator). Esther pointed to the adjacent apartment, where the Gestapo men found Ephraim dressed in his pajamas. They told Cohen that he was to come with them to the Gestapo headquarters in the regional capital of Gap. Cohen asked permission to get dressed, and when he entered his bedroom, jumped from the window to the balcony below, and from there to the garden. The impact caused a serious injury, and he lost consciousness. Hearing the fall, Cohen's neighbor Albert Bonnet rushed to his aid, and with the help of his wife, Marie-Louise, and son, Pierre, brought him inside a barn and hid him among bales of hay. The three then returned to their apartment and climbed into bed, pretending to be asleep. The two Gestapo men carried out a thorough search of the Bonnets' apartment and the rest of the building, shouted threats at Isaac and Esther Cohen, and promised to return the following day. Two-three hours later, when they were sure the Gestapo had left, Albert and Pierre Bonnet returned to where they had hidden Cohen. Cohen asked them to bring him to the home of his good friends Eugène and Aline Ricard (a few hundred meters away). The Bonnets placed him on a hand-pulled wagon and brought him to the Ricards, who immediately called a doctor to see to his wounds. Cohen stayed at the Ricards for a month until his health improved, and then moved to another hideout. Meanwhile Isaac and Esther Cohen left their home with their son Léon and went to hide at the house of the mayor of Montéglin, M. Armand, near the forest. On November 15, 2009, Albert andMarie-Louise Bonnet and Eugène and Aline Ricard were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.