Eidenbenz Elisabeth

Eidenbenz, Elisabeth Elisabeth Eidenbenz, a training instructor, was 24 years old when she volunteered to take care of children who were victims of the civil war in Spain, within the framework of the Swiss Children’s Relief. When the republican forces retreated, she withdrew with them to France. Determined to continue her assistance work, she opened the Maternité Suisse in Elne (Pyrenées Orientales), where she served as its director from 1939 to 1944. She had almost no idea what sort of care newborns needed and knew even less about midwifery. After a brief training program, she set herself to the task, “with much confidence in God” and the conviction that what she could offer women would be better than what was provided in the refugee camps. The Maternité initially sheltered Spanish refugees, and then Jewish women from the Rivesaltes camp, on reprieve from deportation in order to give birth, gypsies and other foreigners. Six hundred children were born there. They included Guy Eckstein, born October 10, 1941. His birth certificate, which made it possible for him to locate a protector later, made the following mention: “… drawn up October 11, 1941, on the declaration of Elisabeth Eidenbenz, 28 years old, Director of the Maternité Suisse in Elne.” Guy’s parents, who were Polish Jews, had fled Belgium in 1940 with the intention of reaching Spain. They were arrested in Perpignan. His mother was pregnant at the time and gave birth at the Maternité in Elne, where she stayed for several months with her baby. Threatened with deportation, the Ecksteins then fled to Thuir where a farmer couple named Capdet opened their home to them, hiding Guy’s father in a barn until the Liberation. Guy and his mother lived there in the open until the day they learned of their impending deportation. His mother then contacted Elisabeth, who hid them back at the Maternité in spite of the perilous searches carried out there. She also offered a convalescent bed to Rosa Heymann, a German Jewwho had been removed from the Rivesaltes camp, and provided a job to her daughter Erna, 16, which saved both of them from deportation. Others benefited from her protection as well. Elisabeth always considered that “it was normal, it was a necessity to help the oppressed and those being pursued.” On December 18, 2001, Yad Vashem recognized Elisabeth Eidenbenz as Righteous Among the Nations.