Memories of Lozère: an extra child for a family of Righteous people

La famille Peyre, de Mende, a acueilli Michèle Vernière. DR – DR

Cette rubrique hebdomadaire est réalisée par Jean-Marie Gazagne.

During the last war, Maria and Félix Peyre ran a hardware store on Place au Beurre in Mende. Félix Peyre and his wife not only helped former soldiers who had been forcibly enlisted in the Wehrmacht to join the Pont-de-Montvert resistance movement, but they also saved a little girl from certain death.

One of their daughters, Joséphine, a teacher in a religious institution in Beaucaire, arrived one fine morning accompanied by a seven-year-old child, Michèle Vernière, of Jewish faith.

In secret

Her parents, like so many others, had been arrested by the Germans. The Peyre family, already with eight children, welcomed this new child and passed him off as one of their own. The neighbors of the Place au Beurre (the Martin, Méjean, Creyx and Bonnefoy families) did not reveal the arrival of this little girl.

Michèle Vernière currently lives in Cyprus and has kept in touch with the children and grandchildren of this family of Righteous.

Maria and Félix Peyre did not receive the recognition they deserved, but often good deeds and acts of courage remain ignored. Perhaps an influential reader can correct this oversight.

* This term of Righteous is used by the State of Israel to recognize people who worked, during the Second World War, to rescue Jews from Nazi or French xenophobia. Information and document: Félix Peyre family.