Aristide Gasnier had already been mayor for fifteen years and was nearly seventy when the Nazi occupation began, in 1940. No doubt, this length of service gave him the moral authority in the community to carry out his bold conspiracy against the occupiers; even the local gendarmerie went along with it. Gasnier ensured that the Jewish refugee hideaways got food tokens, and issued them with new identity papers. For our friend Huguette, to learn at last—and in these times—that her family’s escape from the Holocaust was not just a random act of kindness from a couple of strangers but a concerted act of communal resistance has been deeply heartening.
Source : The Righteous Mayor of Vibraye
