Former Jewish resistance fighter Colette Brull-Ulmann, who participated in the rescue of Jewish children at Rothschild hospital in Paris during World War II, died on Saturday at the age of 101, AFP told AFP on Wednesday the mayor of Nogent-sur-Marne, confirming information from
Le Monde
.
Read also: Frankfurt: 25,000 people evacuated after the discovery of a bomb from World War II
"She
was a great lady, I retain from her a memory of steel on all that she lived, even if she spoke very little, by modesty
", recalled Jacques JP Martin, mayor (DVD) from Nogent-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne), where she had lived since 1985. Colette Brull-Ulmann died in Bry-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne) hospital on May 22, a-t -He specifies.
In 1941, she became a medical intern at the Rothschild Hospital in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, the only hospital that did not then prohibit Jewish doctors from practicing.
Men from the Drancy internment camp were treated there, then after the “
Vel'd'Hiv roundup
” in Paris on July 16, 1942, sick women and children.
"
According to Colette, the roundup is a change: from that moment, she will do everything to save the Jewish children from the hell of Drancy and the camps
", explains Jean-Christophe Portes, journalist, with whom she wrote a book testimony, “
The Children of the Last Salvation
”, published in 2017.
Read also: Var: a student discovers weapons from World War II in a gallery abandoned for 40 years
A "
network
" is then set up in Rothshild. To prevent them from returning to the Drancy camp, hospitalized children are “
exfiltrated
” from the hospital and then entrusted to mutual aid networks. In particular, false death certificates are drawn up. "
She held back the children she had failed to save more than those she had saved,
" recalls Jean-Christophe Portes. Colette Brull-Ulmann had also indulged in him in a documentary broadcast in 2015, "
The Jewish children saved from the Rothschild hospital
". "
It's a fairly unknown story, but around a hundred children have been saved in this hospital
", according to Jean-Christophe Portes.
In 1943, Colette Brull was forced to flee from Rothshild hospital and joined the Central Bureau of Intelligence and Action, a spy service where she did intelligence until the Liberation in 1945. After the war, she had become a pediatrician in Noisy-le-Sec (Seinean-Saint-Denis), where she lived with her doctor husband and her three children. In 2019, she received the Legion of Honor.
