Bady Madeleine (Delas)

Bady, Madeleine Erich Loewe, an attorney, was born in Germany in 1890, but left Berlin with his wife, Edith, in 1933. They moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine in France, where their daughter Marguerite was born in 1936. After the occupation of northern France, the Loewes fled to the town of Bourg de Péage (Drôme) in the south of the country. There they rented a small, furnished apartment. In August 1942, their landlady discovered that her tenants were Jews, and set out to report them to the police. A local priest, who was active in the underground, took them to the nearby town of Romans-sur-Isère, where he placed them in the care of Madeleine Bady. Bady’s husband had died suddenly at a young age in January 1939, leaving the 39-year-old widow to manage his shoe factory, which employed 150 people. At that time, she was clueless about the business, as she had had no training or previous experience. A courageous woman, she took over the reins of the factory and managed it successfully while raising two children – Jean, a teen-aged son, and Madeleine, a severely handicapped daughter. The Loewes were given the use of the first floor of Bady’s home, which was surrounded by a garden and a fence. The arrangement was risky, as Bady was in frequent contact with the Germans, who ordered shoes from her factory. The Loewe family remained with Bady for two months and then found shelter elsewhere, but remained in touch with their rescuer. A few months later, Bady helped them once more, by transporting Edith and Marguerite in her car to Villard-de-Lans, where the sickly child could convalesce. Bady also looked after the Loewes' few valuable possessions until the end of the war, and then returned them to their rightful owners. After the war, Erich Loewe made a statement in court about the courage and extraordinary behavior of his family's rescuer. On November 8, 2011, Yad Vashem recognized Madeleine Bady as Righteous Among the Nations.