The Mary Elmes Prize

Erica Magee Entry Category: History Essay Entry Title: The Prestigious Mary Elmes Dominican College Muckross Park, Dublin Cooperating Teacher: Marie-Claire Tuite [email protected] The Prestigious Mary Elmes

‘The Irish Oskar Schindler’ a nickname quintessentially given to Mary Elmes, an Irishwoman whose work during the Holocaust saved the lives of many. Mary Elmes was an Irish aid worker and was the first Irish person awarded with ‘The Righteous Among Nations.’

Marie Elizabeth Jean Elmes was born on the 5th of May 1908 unbeknownst to the atrocities she would face in her later life. Elmes was born in Ballintemple, a small town to the east of city. Her father Edward Elmes was a pharmacist and her mother Elizabeth was treasurer of the Munster Women's Franchise League. Her mother actively campaigned for the vote for women instilling a mindset of determination in her daughter. Elmes’ younger brother’s name was John and he would eventually take over the family’s pharmaceutical business run by her father. 1

Born into quite a progressive family for its time she was exposed to the injustices of the world, although the school that she and her brother attended tried to keep out the turbulence of the 1920’s. Rochelle School in Blackrock, Cork now Ashton School provided education to middle-class Church of children. Elmes' exposure became much more personal in May of 1915 when the ocean liner Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat 26km from where she lived. The Elmes family along with many others went to go help out with the casualties. Elmes had another encounter with World War 1 when she knitted socks for the front-line soldiers. In 1920 in the height of the Irish War of Independence the family business was burned down by British forces.

During the 1920’s the number of women at that time pursuing a higher education was on the rise and Elmes was encouraged by her parents to further her studies. She spent a year in and after studied modern languages at Trinity College where her eminence for languages was shown. During her time at Trinity she won a gold medal for academic excellence. She also won two scholarships, one to the London School of Economics and one to study International Relations in the Geneva School of International Studies.

The year she won the scholarship to Geneva was also the year the Spanish Civil War broke out. The Spanish Civil War began on July 18, 1936 when right-wing military officers revolted in Morocco and the revolt quickly spread to mainland Spain. The rebels received aid from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and the republicans received aid from the Soviet Union and the International Brigades which was made up of European volunteers and Americans. On October 1, 1936 the leader of the republicans General Franco was named head of state. Both sides later turned abroad for help and a non-intervention agreement was signed by countries involved but was largely ignored. 20,000 foreigners served in medical or auxiliary units. Mary Elmes was one of the 20,000 people.

At the start of 1937 Elmes was asked to volunteer to help in Spain by the Sir Young George Ambulance Unit. In February 1937 Elmes sailed to Guatemala and was posted to a feeding

1 According to the 1911 Census, Mary Elmes was recorded as being a visitor to Springfield House, the reason being unknown. station in Almeria. Once there she quickly set out helping the ill children who were patients in the hospital. During her time there she learned valuable skills that would benefit others in the camps she later worked in. The constant attacks on civilians by Nationalist forces forced her to locate a safe place for the children in Polop. At one-point Mary herself was under fire when she evacuated several children and several of her colleagues were injured. In January 1939, the AFSC elected Elmes to run a hospital in Alicante. The American Friends Service Committee was a Quaker humanitarian organisation. Four months later General Franco closed all Quaker centres and Elmes was sent to the AFSC HQ in , France.

As a consequence of her work in Spain The International Committee for Child Refugees asked Elmes to deliver a programme to child refugees. The programme entailed a literacy, education and cultural programme. Many refugees began to flee from Spain which was known as La Retirada (The Retreat) due to the occupation of Nationalist forces in Spain and Elmes procured books, furniture and stationery for camps around Perpignan for the refugees. Elmes also set up several schools around the region. As well as this Elmes reunited many families who were placed in different camps around the region.

On the 7th of January 1941, the first internees of the newly established camp in Rivesaltes arrived. A further 8,000 people would be interned in the camps by April. Rivesaltes served as a transit camp to the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp. Thousands of people were transported to Auschwitz from Rivesaltes and 440 of them were children. However, Mary Elmes and her colleagues saved an estimated 427 children from their impending fate.

Elmes started to remove Jewish children from the camp in August 1942. An extract from The Extraordinary Story of Mary Elmes by Paddy Butler notes that a colleague of Elmes said that the commandant of the camp when he learned about the deportation of children requested that Elmes should “faites les disparaitre” (make them disappear.) Elmes did not only that but she secured AFSC homes for the children in the Pyréneés-Orientales region. Elmes managed to save 9 children from the first Auschwitz-bound convoy on the 11th of August 1942. Elmes daringly smuggled children out of the camp in the boot of her car right under the noses of the guards on multiple occasions. Elmes also arranged for the children to stay in holiday homes for a short interlude from the camp. A woman named Alice Resch who was based at Toulouse took the children off Elmes and placed them in homes in the Pyréneés. Alice safely kept 49 out of 50 children in an orphanage nearby.

René and Mario Freund were two of the many children that Elmes saved. In 1933 they moved to Milan where their father was working for a company as a result of the persecution of Jews. In 1939 they moved from Milan to France as their father had acquired a visa. Ronald describes the tragic irony that his father worked for the French railway and that he was deported on the same railway. In August 1942 Hans and Eva Freund, a consultant engineer and a physician, tried to flee with their two and five years old sons from France into as a roundup of Jews was taking place in France by Vichy authorities. At the border they were caught, and French police interned them in the Rivesaltes camp. Ronald’s brother and his father sucessfully made it over the border, but he and his mother were caught. When they reached Rivesaltes Hans approached Elmes and asked her to take his sons away, Elmes agreed and the boys never saw their father again. Later two Lutwaffe officers were assassinated by the French Resistance and in retaliation they decided that foreign Jews between the age of 16 to 65 should be rounded up. Ronald’s parents were being detained in the Gur’s concentration camp. Hans was taken to Drancy even though he was exempt from deportation due to his work for the French government, but the French were under pressure to fill the quota that the German government had set. He was sent to Majdanek concentration camp outside Lublin in Poland. On the 25th of September Elmes smuggled the boys out of the camp in the boot of her car. Elmes drove them up into the Pyréneés mountains and they were met by a priest who enrolled them in a Catholic school in a small village. Many families there hid them from the authorities. Later in their lives the two brothers now named Michael Freund and Ronald Friend moved to Canada. Ronald did an extensive amount of research which entailed Elmes’ heroic work in saving the lives of many children and he later nominated her for the ‘Righteous Among Nations’ award in January 2013.

George Koltein was only six when he, his brother and his parents were interned in Rivesaltes. Police had raided their apartment earlier that month, so they had fled to Vichy-France, but they were arrested upon arrival and were sent to Rivesaltes. His parents were Polish, and both were tailors. Koltein was smuggled out of the camp with six other children and into the St Christopher Orphanage in Perpignan. The orphanage was run by a woman named Lois Gunden and she and Elmes saved those seven children's lives that day.

The age of which children could be deported at the start of the regime was 5 but later was reduced to two. Charlotte Berger-Greneche was testament to that. At the age of four Charlotte was due to be deported once she turned five. Her mother Zirl Berger was deported to Drancy and then to Auschwitz in the autumn of 1942. She was aged just 31. Just before her birthday Elmes and her colleagues successfully arranged for Charlotte to be sent to a nearby home. A document details how Elmes and her colleagues pretended that Charlotte was sick. Charlotte was also hidden in children's colonies which Elmes had set up along the coast. The Newstalk radio documentary that included Charlotte's story and Clodagh Finn author of Time To Risk All tells us that as Charlotte's mother was being taken away she asked Elmes to ‘give Charlotte my most affectionate thoughts and a thousand kisses.’ In the interview Charlotte says she only has one memory of her mother and that's her dressing her. Charlotte also credits a Jewish woman named Vivette Samuel for working with Mary.

At the start of 1943 Mary began to hide documents containing illegal information under her bath in her apartment in Perpignan. On the 5th of February 1943 she was arrested by the Sicherheitspolizei which were the German security police and she was sent to the Saint-Michel prison in Toulouse. Elmes soon after was transferred to Fresnes, a prison in run by the Gestapo where people were shot or hung every day for their actions against the Nazi regime. Many were tortured and the conditions within the prison were atrocious. Her mother who still lived in Ballintemple, Cork campaigned successfully for her release. Senior AFSC members informed Seán Murphy an Irish minister to Vichy-France and Robert Brennan an Irish minister to America of Elmes imprisonment and six months later on the 23rd of July she was freed. When asked about her time there she said “Well, we all experienced inconveniences in those days, didn't we?” True to her character she immediately resumed all work upon her release and continued until the end of the war. In June 1946 she retired from the AFSC and married a man named Robert Danjou on the 12th of that month. Her first child Caroline was born in October and her godmother was Faustine Chianelli, a lady Elmes shared a cell with in Fresnes. In July 1948 her son Patrick was born. She lived out the rest of her life in an apartment in Rue Olivia in Perpignan. She rarely mentioned what extraordinary work she had done throughout the war and so much so her own extended family up until last year never knew the extent of her heroic actions. Elmes even refused a Légion d'honneur. Elmes died on March 9th, 2002.

Just around a decade after her death Professor Ronald Freund nominated her for the award ‘Righteous Among Nations’ by Yad Vashem which her children accepted on her behalf on the 27th of June 2014 making her the first Irish person to receive that award. Her work is recognised not only in France but in Ireland. On the same day a memorial was unveiled in Canet Plage to commemorate her work. The Mary Elmes pedestrian bridge in Cork opened in May 2019 and George Koltein, Charlotte Berger-Greneche and Patrick Danjou her son travelled to see the opening.

Mary Elmes was a passionate, determined and inspiring woman. Her heroic work along with others saved the lives of many during a dark and troubled time. By taking part in the Mary Elmes Prize I have learnt so much about a woman I had never even heard of before and I have come to admire her greatly.

References:

● https://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a10160&searchClicked=clicked&searc hBy=1&browsesearch=yes

● https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/arid-30953568.html

● https://www.newstalk.com/documentary-and-drama-on-newstalk/mary-elmes-documentary -newstalk-1021834

● https://www.herstory.ie/news/2018/7/12/mary-elmes-the-irish-oskar-schindler

● https://www.britannica.com/event/Spanish-Civil-War

● https://www.afsc.org/newsroom/rescued-children-finally-identify-irish-aid-worker-who-save d-them-auschwitz

● https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/rivesaltes-transit-camp

● https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/corkwoman-helped-jewish-brothers-and-many-others- avoid-auschwitz-1.454767

● https://www.afsc.org/sites/default/files/documents/Pages%20from%20Elmes%20Risch%20-%20 box%2009_folder%20005%20of%20134.pdf ● https://www.afsc.org/image/mary-elmes-1

● http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/results.jsp?searchMoreVisible=false&census_year =1911&surname=Elmes&firstname=Marie&county19011911=&county1821=&county1831=&cou nty1841=&county1851=&barony=&parish=&ward=&townland=&houseNumber=&familyId=&ded =&age=&sex=F&search=Search&ageInMonths=&relationToHead=&religion=&education=&occup ation=&marriageStatus=&yearsMarried=&birthplace=&nativeCountry=&language=&deafdumb= &causeOfDeath=&yearOfDeath=&familiesNumber=&malesNumber=&femalesNumber=&maleSer vNumber=&femaleServNumber=&estChurchNumber=&romanCatNumber=&presbNumber=&pro tNumber=&marriageYears=&childrenBorn=&childrenLiving=