Gaillard Marie-Aimée (Monnet); Daughter: Clotilde

Gaillard, Marie-Aimée Gaillard, Clotilde Isaac Hakim was born in 1905 in Istanbul, Turkey. He arrived in France in 1925, where he worked as a merchant trader. In 1932 he married Zefira Lévy, also from Istanbul. The couple lived in Lyon, where their four children Robert (b. 1932), Rebecca (b. 1935), Fortunée (b. 1937) and Albert (b. 1940) were born. In 1939, Hakim volunteered for service in the French army. He was taken captive, and held in a POW camp in Germany until the end of the war. Zefira managed to avoid arrest, but in February 1942 she was persuaded to hand her children over to the welfare organization Secours National, which found them places of refuge: Robert stayed with farmers; Fortunée and Albert were placed in a children's home; and Rebecca joined a group of children from Lyon who were taken to La Clayette (Saône-et-Loire). The mayor of the town, M. Fontlupt, decided to give the little Jewish girl to a devout family, and asked Marie Aimée Gaillard, a widow, to look after her. Gaillard and her daughter Clotilde, a Red Cross worker, immediately agreed. Although the arrangement was supposed to be for only three months, when the Secours National was unable to take her back, Clotilde asked Zefira (whom she had gotten to know) if they could continue looking after Rebecca. They told their neighbors she was the child of a POW, without revealing her Jewish identity. Rebecca was deeply loved and well taken care of by her rescuers; Marie Aimée regarded her as a grandchild, and Clotilde embraced her as her daughter. She attended school in the La Clayette, and took part in religious rituals, although she was never forced to become Christian. The enormous risk that the Gaillards took in looking after Rebecca for more than two years could have led to their investigation, arrest and deportation. After the liberation of the area in the summer of 1944, Zefira was reunited with Robert, Fortunée and Albert. She also looked after two of her brother'schildren. Their parents, Ovadia and Zelda Lévy, and two-year-old sister had been deported and murdered, but they had evaded arrest: the son had gone into hiding and the daughter had been hospitalized at the time of her parents' arrest. While her mother was rebuilding the family's life, Rebecca stayed with the Gaillards until her father returned from captivity, regularly visiting her mother and siblings. In May 1945, the family was finally reunited. Rebecca stayed in close contact with the Gaillards until Marie Aimée's death in 1970, and continued to visit Clotilde who had turned 103 when the request to honor her was submitted to Yad Vashem in 2006. On July 30, 2007 Yad Vashem recognized Marie-Aimée Gaillard and her daughter Clotilde as Righteous Among the Nations.