de Menthon Henry

de Menthon, Henry Salomon and Emilie-Djemila Farhi emigrated from Turkey to France in the 1920s. They settled in Paris with their seven children: Albert, Angèle, Victorine, Raphaël, Claire, Jean-Jacques and Daniel. In 1943, when the persecution of Jews in France began to escalate, Salomon and Emilie decided to seek refuge for their children outside the city. The older children (Albert, 17, Angèle and Victorine) adamantly refused to be separated from their parents, and Emilie-Djemila would not be parted from three-year-old Daniel. Thus the remaining three– Raphaël (10), Claire (8) and Jean-Jacques (6) – were placed in the hands of the "Secours National" agency, which evacuated them from the city along with other children. On July 27, 1943, Salomon accompanied them to the train station. Before they parted, Salomon asked his daughter Claire to promise him two things: never to forget that she was Jewish and always to remain together with her brothers. The Secours National took the children to the village of Saint-Loup Nangouard, and from there they were put on a truck to be dispersed among the homes of the local residents. When they arrived at the home of M. and Mme. Vauthier, who had requested to take in a girl, Claire was asked to get off the truck. Remembering her promise to her father, Claire refused and began to scream. M. Vauthier was a gardener at the chateau of Count Henry de Menthon. Luckily, the Count, who was also the village mayor, was passing by, and stopped to investigate the cause of the tumult. After understanding the situation, the Count himself took charge of the three Farhi children. Raphaël and Jean-Jacques were brought to the Count's chateau - Chateau de Saint-Loup Les Gray - where they stayed until the end of the war. Claire stayed with the gardener and his wife during the day, and every evening went to sleep in the chateau with her brothers. The danger was immense: everyone in the village, as well as the staff in the chateau, knew that the children were Jewish and that the Count's son was fighting for the resistance. The children were in contact with their family until May 4, 1944, when Salomon and Emilie-Djemila, Albert, Angèle, Victorine and little Daniel were deported to Auschwitz. Only Albert survived. After the war, upon hearing of their parents' murder, the children were sent to an orphanage. Claire later immigrated to Israel, and in 1959 joined Kibbutz Gadot. She got married and had three children. Having come from a family of seven children, she decided she wanted to have the same number of children as her parents had, and adopted another four. Immersed in her new life, Dina's connection with the de Menthons was broken. Sheltering the three children was not the de Menthon family's only involvement in the Holocaust and the war. Henry de Menthon and his son, François de Menthon, were also involved in the resistance movement, After the war Francois de Menthon became the chief French prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials, at which, in his opening statement, he stated: "I propose today to prove to you that all this organized and vast criminality springs from what I may be allowed to call a crime against the spirit, I mean a doctrine which, denying all spiritual, rational, or moral values by which the nations have tried, for thousands of years, to improve human conditions, aims to plunge humanity back into. Barbarism, no longer the natural and spontaneous barbarism of primitive nations, but into a diabolical barbarism, conscious of itself and utilizing for its ends all material means put at the disposal of mankind by contemporary science. This sin against the spirit is the original sin of National Socialism from which all crimes spring. This monstrous doctrine is that of racialism" Many years later, Claire (today Dina Godschalk) had a chance meeting with the Count's granddaughter, with whom she had played during her time in the chateau. Their shared past resurfaced, and Dina's connection with the de Menthons was reestablished. On September 5, 2012, a group of some 30 of Count Henry de Menthon's grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren came to Jerusalem, and a ceremony was held posthumously honoring him as Righteous Among the Nations. Dina Gotschalk was also present with her children and grandchildren, and the two families had a tearful reunion.