Hébras Madeleine (Coignoux)

Hébras, Madeleine In August 1942, after she was informed upon and faced the danger of imprisonment, Evelyne Korwill fled to the home of her friend, Madeleine Hébras, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. With her husband interned in a POW camp in Germany, Hébras hid Korwill, then pregnant with her son Guy, in her apartment for five months. Korwill and her husband Arthur later managed to reach Grenoble, southeastern France, where Guy was born. On the day before Guy's birth, Korwill's father Schmuel/Chaïm Zywie was informed upon and arrested by French police at his apartment in Paris' 20th arrondissement. He was taken to the Drancy internment camp, and was sent to Auschwitz on 2 March 1943. Five days later he was murdered. At the time, Korwill's mother Jeanette Zywie was hospitalized at the Thenon Hospital in Paris. Hearing of the imminent storming of the hospital in search of Jewish patients, Hébras used her cunning and courage to get Zywie out of the hospital, and then hid her in her home. For fear of her disclosure, Hébras forbade Zywie to approach the window, and refused to use her food coupons, managing instead to use only her own rations to feed them both. She later accompanied Zywie to Grenoble – then under Italian control, which granted Jews relative protection from deportation – where Zywie was reunited with her family. When in September 1943 the Germans took over the Italian zone in France, the Korwill family was faced again with the danger of arrest and imprisonment. They decided to flee, and with the help of a border smuggler, managed to cross the French Alps into Switzerland. There they were arrested, and spent the remainder of the war in Swiss refugee camps, where the adults were made to work in forced labor units. Evelyne Korwill and Madeleine Hébras remained in close contact after the war, visiting one another until their deaths in 2002. In February 1, 2010 Madeleine Hébras was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.