Debroux Sylvie (Gallet); Son: Gilbert

Debroux, Sylvie Debroux, Gilbert Joseph Goldenberg (b. 1887) and his wife Betty Goldenberg née Grunberg (b. 1888), and their daughters Germaine (b. 1914) and Charlotte (b. 1915) arrived in France from Romania after the First World War, and settled in Paris. Charlotte married Rodolphe Goldenberg, and Germaine married Jacque Bernstein; Monique Bernstein, their daughter, was born in 1935 in Paris. When World War II broke out, Rodolphe was conscripted into the French army and captured by the Germans; he managed to escape, and returned home. In early 1942, the Goldenberg family left Paris for Marseilles, at the time in the unoccupied southern zone. With the German takeover in November 1942, however, life in the city became more dangerous for the Jews, and the Jewish family moved on to Aix-les-Bains (Savoie), where they rented rooms. Rodolphe and Charlotte became acquainted with their neighbors, the Gallet family. Mme. Gallet had a large family living in the surrounding villages. She sent Rodolphe to get agricultural produce once a week from her sister Sylvie Debroux, in the village of Dressy. In early 1943, a gendarme warned Mme. Gallet that the Germans planned to arrest all the Goldenberg family members. Shortly before the Germans arrived, they managed to quickly pack what they could and fled to Sylvie Debroux's home. Debroux took them in, and then suggested that they move further away from Aix-les Bains. She knew that near the place of her birth in Pringy, a small village high in the mountains, there was an abandoned building where the family could find refuge. Her husband was ill and could not guide them, but their 13-year-old son Gilbert, who often visited his grandparents and was quite familiar with the way, offered to take them. With Gilbert’s help, the refugees managed to make the difficult journey through the mountain paths and reach the abandoned cottage. A few weeks later, the locals in neighboring Bessine told them that there was a farm for rentin their village. The farm was located on a ridge where they could see everyone approaching, and it was at the edge of the forest where they could hide in times of danger. There were only seven families in the village, and although they knew their new neighbors were Jews, they helped them settle in. In January 1944, Charlotte gave birth in the local hospital to a son, Francis Richard. With the help of a villager who brought his horse and cart from Bessine, mother and child returned to the village immediately after the birth. When they arrived in the village, it was swarming with Germans, so the cart-owner hid her in one of the local homes until they left. The Goldenberg family members returned to Paris after the liberation of France, but remained in close contact with Sylvie and Gilbert Debroux. When Rodolphe became terminally ill in 1969, he asked to be hospitalized in Aix-les-Bains, so he could live his final days amid the people who had once saved his life. On September 19, 2010, Yad Vashem recognized Sylvie Debroux and her son Gilbert as Righteous Among the Nations.