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Alice Resch

Alice Resch Synnestvedt (b. 14 December 1908, Chicago, d. 2007), commonly known as Alice Resch, was a Norwegian-American who worked in Vichy France for the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) during World War II. She is recognized for saving Jewish children from deportation to concentration camps in Nazi Germany.

Early life

Alice Resch was born in Chicago, Illinois to Norwegian parents. In 1913 her parents returned to Norway where she grew up. As a young woman she traveled around Europe and studied nursing at the American Hospital in Paris, graduating in 1932. From 1932 to 1939, she worked in several places around France as a nurse. Resch was multilingual, fluent in French, German, Norwegian, and English. Her language skills facilitated her competence and versatility. She was described as "a brownish blonde with a chubby face and a dynamo in motion."

World War II

In May 1940, Resch moved to Agen in southwestern France to work with refugees there. On 21 June 1940, she began her employment with the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) in its office in Toulouse headed by Helga Holbek, a Dane. Neither of the women were Quakers. The advance of the German army after its invasion of France caused hundreds of thousand of French to flee south to Toulouse and helping these refugees were Resch's first task. With the armistice agreement between France and Germany on 22 June, most of the French refugees returned home, but many anti-Nazi refugees, mostly Jews, from Germany and other German controlled countries remained in southern France. Southern or Vichy France would remain unoccupied by Germany until November 1942. Most of Resch's work in Toulouse was providing food and other aid to refugees, especially children. In early 1942, Resch began working in the Gurs internment camp near Toulouse, spending six months in the camp.

As 1942 progressed and German exportations of Jews, including children, from Vichy began, Resch's attention, as well as those of other refugee workers, such as Mary Elmes, also working for the Quakers, turned to rescue rather than relief. Efforts to obtain more exit visas to permit children to depart France were redoubled -- but succeeded for only a few hundred children. Jewish organizations set up children's colonies to house refugee children and found French families to shelter others who were given false names and identities. Resch participated in the illegal escape activities at the same time that she also continued working on the legal activity of aid to refugees in camps. She said, "we worked almost daily, hiding both adults and children and securing false identity papers and ration cards. But all this was done on the sly, even among those of us in the office. We were a neutral, non-political organization after all, and foreigners to boot. We had to be very, very careful not to compromise our work in the camps and for the French children."

In January 1943, Americans working for relief organizations were interned by the Germans. Resch, a Norwegian citizen, remained in the Toulouse area until 1948, continuing her work with the Quakers.

Yad Vashem

In 1982, Resch was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, an Israeli Holocaust remembrance center. She is recognized for supervising 16 group homes for refugee children in Vichy France. In 1941, she secured the release of about 50 children from the Gurs camp and sequestered them in an orphanage in Aspet, Haute Garonne. She helped care for the children until they could be smuggled out to Switzerland in 1944. In 1943, she personally escorted four children to the border with Switzerland with documents that permitted their entry. She risked her life to shelter children and save them from being deported from France to concentration camps in Germany.

Later life

Resch's autobiography Over the Highest Mountains was published in 2005. The book is derived from an account of her experiences which she wrote to communicate with her mother who was deaf. Hal Myers, one of the children she helped, had the text translated to English and it was subsequently published.