Errazuriz Maria (Edwards)

Errazuriz, Maria Maria Errazuriz, a Chilean from a devout Catholic family, lived in Paris in the 1930s and stayed there during the German occupation. A social worker by profession, she was employed at the Rothschild Jewish hospital. Maria played a dominant role in rescue actions at the hospital, whose goal from 1942 onward was to conceal as many Jews as possible from the Germans. Some of the hospital’s pavilions had been fenced in with barbed wire and turned into detention centers. When the sick people got better, they were transferred to Drancy and deported. Claire Heyman, a Jewish social worker, was an organizer of the escape network. She was assisted by doctors and clergymen, including Abbot Ménardais*. They took care of supplying false papers and sending the fugitives to Christian institutions or foster families. Betty Fridman, age eight, was arrested with her mother on the morning of July 16, 1942, and sent to the Paris Winter Velodrome. Her father had been arrested in 1941. Her mother fell ill and they were then transferred from the Velodrome to the Rothschild hospital, where Betty was placed in the pavilion for contagious diseases. She was able to visit her mother from time to time until one day she found her bed empty. Having been restored to health, she had been transferred to Drancy and then Auschwitz, where she was murdered. “Aunt Claire” and “Aunt Maria” organized the children’s escape and sent her to the Château du Moulinet. They also took responsibility for her after the Liberation. Two other Jewish children, Jean and André Frydman, age four and one at the time, also never forgot Maria. After the war, she entrusted them to the Elkouby family who adopted them, since their parents, Jacques and Chana (née Fliderbaum), were deported and murdered. They maintained permanent contact with Maria until she returned to Chile in 1960. She was decorated with the Legion of Honor for her contributions to the Resistance. On October 27, 2005, Yad Vashem recognizedMaria Errazuriz as Righteous Among the Nations.