Nguyen Paul

Paul Nguyen Cong Anh Paul Nguyen was born in Vietnam and immigrated to France. In 1942 he was studying at the university in Nice, where he met a fellow student, Jadwiga Alfabet, a Jewish refugee from Poland. The two students fell in love and became engaged. In the summer of 1942 the French police began arresting Jews with foreign nationality, including some of Jadwiga’s relatives, the Berliner family. Paul decided to marry Jadwiga, in the hope that she would then become a French citizen and be protected from deportation. The couple married on 5 September 1942 and moved to Clermont Ferrand and continued their studies there. In summer 1943 they returned to Nice, which by then was under Italian control and relatively safe. In September 1943 the Germans occupied Nice and all the Italian controlled zones and the Jews were in danger of deportation. Paul Nguyen decided to hide not only his wife, but also her relatives: her uncle and aunt, Jakub and Salome Berliner and their baby son Roland. Nguyen somehow managed to get false papers and in November 1943 took the train with Jakub Berliner to Annecy, where he put him in touch with a smuggler who took Jakub to Switzerland. He then repeated the journey with Salome Berliner and her infant. Paul and Jadwiga Nguyen had two daughters, and when the request was made to recognize Paul as Righteous in 2006, both had celebrated their 87th birthday. On 30 April 2007 Yad Vashem recognized Paul Nguyen Cong Anh as Righteous Among the Nations.