Using her old bicycle, Marie-Rose Gineste helped spread a crucial message about the deportation of Jews from France.
Using her old bicycle, Marie-Rose Gineste helped spread a crucial message about the deportation of Jews from France. After the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, the Germans occupied the northern part of the country. Then, in 1942, the new French government, known as the Vichy regime, collaborated with German occupiers to begin deporting tens of thousands of Jews from all over France, mostly to Auschwitz. Bishop Pierre Marie Théas of Montauban in southern France drafted a pastoral letter condemning the deportations and the "wild barbarism" with which Jews were being treated. As it was too risky to send through the mail, the letter would need to be hand delivered to all the churches in the diocese. Marie-Rose volunteered to cycle from church to church to deliver the message. “It was with great enthusiasm that I accepted this mission,” she recalled. Coming from a high-ranking church official, this letter helped sway public opinion and perhaps mobilized a segment of the French po...