By Mike Griffen
Halfway down the Rue des Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais, in the predominately Jewish neighborhood of Marais, in Paris’ IV arrondissement, is Ecole des Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais. At first glance, one would not suspect that it is a school; two magnificent bronze ox-head sculptures decorate the facade and, blending in with the limestone pillars on both sides of the entryway, are two plaques. The plates serve as memorials to the 165 Jewish elementary school children and their instructor who perished as a result of the Nazi’s “Final Solution.”
Joseph Migneret the head of Ecole des Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais, watched as his school’s population was nearly wiped out. After only four students showed up for the first day in 1942 Migneret, a non-Jew, joined an underground network in an effort to help his students and their families escape. He became active in an underground network which helped French Jews and many of his students flee Nazi territory by giving them paperwork of non-Jewish Frenchman.
None of the children that were deported from Ecole des Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais survived the Holocaust but through the effort of Migneret and people like him, the lives of dozens of people were saved.