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Rescued Children Finally Identify Irish Aid Worker Who Saved Them from Auschwitz

(Times of Israel) Michael Riordan - Two young boys huddled silently under a blanket in the back of a large black car as it crossed under the gaze of French prison guards and out the gates of Rivesaltes internment camp on Sep. 25, 1942. Escaping deportation to Auschwitz and certain death in the gas chambers, Rene and Mario Freund, aged 2 and 6, were driven to a remote village in the Pyrenees Mountains, where they were enrolled in a Catholic school and hidden by local families. Decades later, Rene and Mario - now named Ronald Friend and Michael Freund - identified their heroic liberator who took them out of the camp, the Irish aid worker Mary Elmes, and nominated her as Righteous Among the Nations. She was recognized by Yad Vashem in 2013, becoming Ireland's first recipient. Elmes saved 200 children, driving many of them through the mountains to Catholic orphanages, and smuggling others across the border into Spain. In 1943, Elmes was arrested by the Gestapo on suspicion of aiding Jews and sent to prison in Fresnes near Paris. She spent six traumatic months there until, after intervention by the Irish Consulate and the International Red Cross, she was released. After the war Elmes remained in France where she married a French man. She died in 2002. The story of her personal valor has been highlighted in a new documentary, "It Tolls for Thee," narrated by Winona Ryder.
2017-11-24 00:00:00
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