A young woman surrounded by suffering.
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
It’s difficult for us to imagine the Europe that existed in 1939. The Spanish civil war had begun in 1936 and on January 26, 1939, Franco’s troops took Barcelona. In the three weeks that followed 475,000 people fled across the border into France! All these people had to be housed somewhere, so dozens of camps and former military bases became internment camps.
One of these was Camp Joffre in Rivesaltes. The camp could hold 8,000, but was quickly overflowing. You may note that all this was going on in the spring of 1939, and as if things weren’t bad enough, Hitler would invade Poland in September. Within a few months, this French territory and all these refugees would fall under Nazi control. Not surprisingly, thousands of Jews were soon added to the interned and deportation of "undesirables" to Auschwitz commenced. When all was said and done, 2,551 Jews were deported from Rivesaltes, 400 of them children.
But somehow in all the chaos and insanity, we always find heroes, don’t we? Such was the case with Friedel Reiter, a young nurse with the Swiss Red Cross. She worked at Rivesaltes from November 1941 to November 1942 and was deeply touched by the suffering of the Jews and Spanish refugees. As we might imagine, the inmates lived in terrible conditions and received little food. Friedel provided medical care, handed out extra food, and organized activities for the children. That sounds rather simple and ordinary, doesn’t it? In reality though it had to be crushing for a young woman to be surrounded every day by such suffering.
It soon became clear to Friedel that people were being transported to their deaths when they left the camp. She determined to save as many children as she could and began smuggling children to surrounding towns where they could be hidden. One of these towns was Chambon-sur-Lignon, where a young man, Auguste Bohny ran a clandestine operation. This one town became a beacon of light and hope in the darkness and by war’s end had managed to save somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 Jews, some of them Friedel’s smuggled little ones!
Friedel survived the war and guess what? She married that brave young man from Chambon-sur-Lignon and became Friedel Bohny-Reiter! She was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 1990.
