Elmes Mary

Elmes, Mary Elisabeth Mary Elisabeth Elmes was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1909. When the Spanish Civil War broke out she decided to go to Spain, where she was involved in humanitarian aid as part of a Quaker organization, the American Friends Service Committee. In 1939 she joined the Republican refugees who fled to France, and became responsible for all Quaker activity in Perpignan. The Fall of France in 1940 resulted in great challenges for the relief workers. With her staff significantly reduced - the British workers on her team were now enemy aliens and had to leave the country - Elmes had to face the growing plight of Jewish refugees who were interned in detention camps in the Pyrenees region. Elmes joined forces with the Jewish OSE organization and especially with Dr. Joseph Weill and Andrée Salomon, who were active in the rescue of Jews. Until mid-August 1942 children could be legally released from the camps, but on August 11 deportations of Jews from the camp of Rivesaltes began, first to Drancy near Paris, and from there to Auschwitz. From that time until the camp closed on 25 November 1942, the authorities no longer released children from the camp. Elmes was fully aware of the meaning of the deportations. Lois Gunden (an American Mennonite who was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 2012 for rescuing children in the same region) wrote in her journal: "Mary informed me about the return of Polish and German Jews to Poland where death and starvation awaits them". Braving the danger, Elmes and her Jewish colleagues smuggled children out of the camp and brought them to safe places. Two of the children rescued by Mary Elisabeth Elmes were Ronald Freund (today Friend) and his brother Michael. Their parents, Drs. Hans and Eva Freund fled from Germany to Italy when Hitler came to power in 1933. They lived in Milan, where their son Michael was born in 1936. When the anti-Jewish laws were enacted in Italy, the family fled to France and settled in Paris. When Germany invaded France, they fled once again, this time to the South of France. In 1942 they tried to flee to Switzerland but failed; and on 4 September 1942 they were interned in the camp of Rivesaltes. According to a letter Mary Elmes wrote to the American Friends Service Committee in Marseille, she convinced Dr. Freund to take the two children out of the camp. "He has signed the necessary discharge, confiding the children to our care". Michael and Ronald were taken to a children's home in Vernet les Bains and then to the St. Louis Hospital in Perpignan. Hans Freund was deported to Majdanek on 4 March 1943, where he perished. The mother survived the war and was reunited with her sons after liberation. In February 1943 Mary Elmes was arrested by the authorities because of her resistance to the German occupiers and the Vichy government. She was first held in Toulouse, and later taken to Fresnes prison on the outskirts of Paris. She was nevertheless released six months after her arrest. She continued her humanitarian work until the end of the war and the liberation of France. She lived in France until she passed away in 2003. On January 23, 2013 Yad Vashem re cognized Mary Elisabeth Elmes as Righteous Among the Nations.