This weekly column is produced by Jean-Marie Gazagne.
During the last war, Maria and Félix Peyre ran a hardware store, Place au Beurre, in Mende. Félix Peyre and his wife not only helped former soldiers forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht to join the Pont-de-Montvert maquis, but they also saved a little girl from certain death.
One of their daughters, Joséphine, a teacher in a religious establishment in Beaucaire, arrived one fine morning accompanied by a seven-year-old child, Michèle Vernière, of Jewish faith.
And secret
His 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 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 Righteous family.
Maria and Félix Peyre did not get the recognition they deserved, but often good deeds and acts of courage remain ignored. Perhaps an influential reader can correct this oversight.
