Report on the ceremony awarding the Righteous medal to Pastor Pierre Gagnier and his wife Hélène (January 18, 2012)
Report on the ceremony awarding the Righteous medal to Pastor Pierre Gagnier and his wife Hélène
January 18, 2012
Speech by Andrée Karsenti (President of the association “Les Enfants et Amis Abadi”)
Madam Mayor,
Madam Member of Parliament,
Elected representatives,
Dear friends,
Seventy years after one of the most tragic periods in our history, our memory remains vigilant. Today we pay tribute to these men and women of honour who quite simply allowed us to live – we, the hidden and rescued children, whose only crime was to have been born Jewish. The memory of a couple reaches us: Pastor Pierre Gagnier and his wife Hélène. In September 1943, Pierre Gagnier was pastor of the Reformed Church of France on boulevard Dubouchage in Nice and, like Monsignor Rémond, Bishop of Nice, and like Pastor Evrard, his wife and his sons, they answered the call for help from the Marcel network, created by Moussa Abadi and his companion Odette Rosenstock to save Jewish children. A fine example of ecumenism: Jews turning to a bishop and to pastors, not only in their faith but also in their humanity.
During those years of occupation, Pastor Gagnier, a man of courage, true to his convictions and with the unfailing support of his wife, did not hesitate to hide Jews in the presbytery and in the church. The presbytery became an annexe for false papers. Pierre Gagnier himself was very active in making identity cards and ration cards, providing food, money and false baptism certificates, helping people escape and finding hiding places. He asked families in the parish to take in children, and enrolled them in the Scouts – and in the Rover Scouts for the older ones.
Odette and Moussa do not hold the title of Righteous Among the Nations because they were Jewish, but thanks to Madame Blumenthal a square bears their names, a stone’s throw from this town hall, at the junction with the Coulée Verte, where a triangle is formed between avenue Daumesnil and the ends of rue Montgallet and rue de Charenton on its left side.
Monsignor Rémond, Pastor Evrard, his wife Ida and his sons Joseph, Jean, Edmond, Louis and Daniel have all been recognised as Righteous, but Pastor Gagnier and his wife Hélène did not wish to receive this distinction. Pierre Gagnier explained this in a statement in Nice on May 18, 1945: “I believe that we Christians should say nothing of what God allowed us to do for our neighbours in distress. It was a privilege for us to be able to act and fight against that anti-Christian force, German racism.”
I met Jean-Marc and Françoise Gagnier through their daughter Sabine. I heard about Jean-Marc’s parents and about their commitments in life. Pierre Gagnier was deeply devoted to his vocation as a pastor, involved in a Church whose rigidity he rejected, and wanted to be in tune with his time. Ecumenism, in particular, was one of his concerns… but as for his acts of resistance, nothing: he had never said anything!
We, the “Abadi children”, created an association whose aim is to bring together the friends and the children hidden by Odette and Moussa Abadi in order to preserve and perpetuate their memory and, more broadly, to preserve and perpetuate the memory of the Shoah. In our wish to remember Odette and Moussa and to make their actions known, we could not separate them from those who held out a hand to them and without whom nothing would have been possible. Children, survivors – some of whom are bearing witness today – owe their lives to the courage and determination of Pierre and Hélène Gagnier. On behalf of the members of our association, in my own name and with all the friendship that binds me to Jean-Marc and Françoise, I want to express the emotion that is ours, that is mine.
Thank you to Madame Blumenthal for always being there when we ask, and thank you to the municipal team.
Andrée Poch-Karsenti