February 28, 2012: A nun and a deceased priest were honoured as “Righteous Gentiles” for saving three Jewish children in France during the Holocaust. Last year, the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad VaShem decided to award Father Joseph Caupert, Sister Marie-Emilienne and Mother Marie-Rose Brugeron the title of Righteous Among the Nations. The ceremony recognizing Mother Marie-Rose Brugeron will take place in France.

Sister Marie Emilienne received the medal and certificate of honor as did the nephew of the late Father Joseph Caupert at a ceremony at the French embassy and in the presence of Gabrielle Hochman, who survived the Holocaust in hiding at a Catholic orphanage.

Gabrielle Hochman’s family’s story began in 1923, when David and Hella-Zyssa Hochman emigrated from Poland to France and settled in the city of Metz. They bore two children, Annie and René, and after the German invasion in 1940, they moved to Nice, where Gabrielle was born.

Three years later, Italian forces ruled the region after the Nazi occupation, and the Hochmans turned over their three children to the French Jewish humanitarian organization, Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE). The OSE saved approximately 5,000 children, including non-Jews, during the war.

The father, with the help of his Catholic brother-in-law, hid the children in a convent in Mende under the supervision of Father Joseph Caupert and Mother Superior Marie Rose Brugeron. They and Sister Marie-Emilienne kept the girls’ Jewish identity secret, and the nun took it upon herself to protect Gabrielle whenever there was danger from the Nazis. She did not even disclose the girl’s Jewish identity to the nun who was taking care of her.

The Hochman parents went into hiding elsewhere, but the mother was sent to Auschwitz by the Nazis after the Gestapo caught her on her way to visit her children. She was murdered by the Nazis on November 2, 1942. After the war, the father and his two girls were reunited but never discussed their experiences of the Holocaust. The fate of her brother Rene remains unknown.

Gabrielle Hochman began inquiries in the 1990s with the Association of Jewish Children Hidden during the Holocaust. The OSE found her name on a list of children who were secretly hidden. She traveled to France in 1994 to meet Sister Marie-Emilienne, who was honored three years later in Mende.

The document was given a few days ago to France’s Holocaust Memorial museum by a donor who wants to remain anonymous. A respected Holocaust historian Serge Klarsfeld, a trial lawyer and longtime Nazi hunter, stated he is certain of the document’s authenticity and calls it the latest sign of official anti-Semitism by the French and not just by their German occupiers. The uncovered 1940 document provides written proof of the personal involvement of Nazi-occupied France’s wartime leader in persecuting Jews.

Document Proves France's WWII Leader Persecuted Jews

The document dated Oct. 3, 1940, is a draft of a statute on Jews under France’s collaborationist Vichy regime. It includes what Klarsfeld states are handwritten notes by Vichy leader Philippe Petain describing how authorities should target Jews, notably by excluding them from public office and from working in schools.

Klarsfeld stated the document is “decisive proof” that the measures were taken at the behest of Petain himself and that the handwritten notes show that Petain in fact toughened the statute’s original language. Klarsfeld stated the statute was not written “at the Germans’ demands” and shows “the will of Vichy to align itself with the Nazi racial ideology.”

France has struggled to come to terms with its role in the Holocaust. Some 76,000 Jews were deported from France to Nazi concentration camps. Fewer than 3,000 returned alive. It wasn’t until 1995 that then-President Jacques Chirac said the nation bore some responsibility, breaking with the official position that the Vichy regime was not synonymous with the French state.

Historians had only indirect evidence of Petain’s involvement in drafting the statute on Jews, from a declaration by a former foreign minister who said Petain ordered the toughest anti-Semitic measures of all. “At his depths, he was an anti-Semite, and did not defend French Jews. He took the initiative to persecute them,” Klarsfeld stated.

The document appears to show that Petain crossed out an exemption in the original statute for French Jews whose ancestors were naturalized before 1860, and edited it to ensure that Jews could not run for public office. All the changes suggested by the notes were included in the final, published version of the statute.

Klarsfeld, whose father died in the death camp in Auschwitz, has devoted his life to shedding light on France’s collaboration in the Holocaust. He has unearthed thousands of documents clinching court convictions and proving the systematic persecution and deportation of Jews from France during World War II. He has flushed out war criminals from safe havens around the world, including tracking down Nazi Klaus Barbie in Peru.

Klarsfeld’s announcement Sunday, October 2, 2010 came the same day that Paris marked the 30th anniversary of a bombing of a synagogue that killed four and injured dozens and shocked the country. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and leading Jewish figures attended a ceremony marking the anniversary.

A French organization named “The Strength of the Name” has been formed to help Jews change their French last names to their original Jewish ones.

No one knows why it is happening precisely now, but some 30 French Jews have decided the time has come for them to restore their Jewish family names. After World War II, French officials urged Jewish immigrants to change their names to better blend in with French society. Though they were not obligated, their experiences during World War II intimidated most of them into doing so.

Thus, Benjamin Fajnzylber (Feinzilber) became Benjamin Fazel, the Rozenkopfs became the Rosents, the Frankensteins turned into Franiers; and the Wolkowiczs, the Volcots. Michael Wolkowicz, a psychoanalyst and Associate Professor at the Universities of Paris , Tel Aviv, and Glasgow, is among the leaders of the new campaign to recover old Jewish names. The problem is that French law stipulates that though “foreign sounding” family names may be changed to those that sound more “French-like,” once they are changed, they are not permitted to be changed back again.

Another leader of the drive is Celine Masson, also a psychoanalyst and a Professor at the University Paris-Diderot. She actually founded the La Force du Nom (The Strength of the Name) organization, together with French lawyer Nathalie Felzenszwalbe, whose family never changed its original name. Masson’s family was originally surnamed Hassan, before moving to France in the 1960s in a wave of Jewish immigration from Tunisia. “French officials suggested making the name sound more French-sounding,” and “while not forced to change, Celine Masson’s father agreed to do so.” Celine stated, “There was a lot of anti-Semitism in those days.” “I was born a Masson, but the name means nothing. It carries no history, it says nothing about my family, my roots, where we came from.” Jeremie Fazel, the grandson of Benjamin has decided to try to change his name back to Feinzilber. His current last name “doesn’t feel right; it says nothing about my family or our history.” “Everyone needs to know where they come from,” states Fazel. “A family’s name is part of the compass in life.”

Cyril Aslanov, Associate Professor of Linguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and expert on the history of Jewish and formerly-Jewish surnames, is also a leading member of the organization. Hundreds of thousands of Jews, most of them Holocaust survivors, arrived in France in the 1940s and ’50s. “Mainly poor and stateless and fearful of latent anti-Semitism in a country from which 76,000 Jews were dispatched to concentration camps, most were just grateful to be allowed to stay. There was no legal obligation for them to drop their family names, but they often were encouraged to do so.”

“The Strength of the Name” has submitted requests for name-changes to the State Council, which has said it will deal with them individually. Though the “Strength of the Name” people do not believe the law against restoring family names can be revoked, they are hoping that exceptions will be made for them, paving the way for many other Jews to restore their original names.