France: Paul Héraud, Hero and Righteous Among the Nations

The historian Jean-Pierre Pellegrin brings back to light his forgotten dedication in a biography called “Paul Héraud, the Artisan of High Alpine Resistance,” released in June 2024.

Panoramic view of Toulon, the city where Paul Héraud worked courageously to save lives during World War II. His heroism still resonates in the streets of this historic city. Photo credit: Valentin Onu via Pexels.

In the midst of World War II, Paul Héraud, a teacher from Toulon (South of France), unexpectedly rose to heroism. In the face of Nazi persecution threatening Jewish families, he chose courage over fear, covertly protecting children by giving them new identities and hiding them from the Gestapo. His quiet and selfless resistance saved lives despite overwhelming challenges.

The historian Jean-Pierre Pellegrin’s biography, published years later, has revealed the remarkable story of Paul Héraud, acknowledging his ability to perform extraordinary acts in the face of unimaginable evil and highlighting the potential of ordinary individuals. Héraud was not a renowned military hero, but a caring teacher who believed in the value of every person’s life, no matter the danger to themselves.

This 184-page book, published last June by Éditions des Hautes-Alpes, draws a poignant portrait of a simple man inhabited by a quiet courage, who put his life at risk to save the lives of others. A teacher in Toulon, Paul Héraud had made knowledge a weapon and his profession a bulwark against barbarism. But when the war broke out, he did not fight with ink and chalk, but with profoundly human acts of self-denial that time might have almost forgotten.

Jean-Pierre Pellegrin, a fine connoisseur of the twists and turns of the resistance, built his work on archives and testimonies, even if, as he indicates, discretion was the norm to preserve the last witnesses of an era where fear and silence coexisted on every street corner. Some people, met by the historian, still live under the weight of difficult memories. The tragedies of war, despite the decades, always leave traces, and Pellegrin knows this better than anyone.

But who was this man behind the teacher turned resistance fighter? Paul Héraud was above all a shadow artisan. When he realized that the anti-Semitism unleashed by the Vichy regime threatened his neighbors, his students, his friends, he did not hesitate to stand up. He began saving Jewish children, offering them new identities, new lives. Under his roof or in remote Alpine farms, these children escaped the Gestapo, while he watched over them as if they were his own children.

His action, heroic without ever being boastful, was that of a man convinced that every life was worth preserving. The false identities he created were more than a subterfuge: they were doors opened towards survival, in a France where roundups and arrests struck blindly. Toulon was then a dangerous place for all those who did not fit into the regime’s mold. Distrust reigned, and each act of resistance was one step closer to the precipice.

Jean-Pierre Pellegrin precisely describes the risks Paul Héraud took to save these children. In a passage from his book, he recounts that what made Paul so special was his ability to remain calm in the face of adversity. He knew that each child he hid under a fictitious name was a thorn in the side of the Nazi regime. But he never boasted about it. He acted like a father, and these children owed him their lives.
The historian also reveals that Héraud’s work was far from solitary. A secret network of farmers and resistance fighters collaborated with him, providing safe hideouts in the surrounding mountains. There, under the watchful eyes of those who shared his commitment, the children waited, often for months on end, for the war to end. Thanks to his efforts and this solidarity network, several Jewish families were saved from deportation.

This is not about a hero in the classical sense of the term, but about a man that History almost forgot, because modesty and a sense of duty animated each of his gestures. Paul Héraud was neither a war chief nor a great political resistance fighter, but an educator who, in the intimacy of his actions, elevated humanity above barbarism.

Today, the recognition of his title of Righteous Among the Nations, awarded posthumously in 1994, comes to remind us of the importance of his fight and that of thousands of others like him, who remained in the shadows of great History. Jean-Pierre Pellegrin has managed to pay tribute to one of those men for whom human life, regardless of its origin, deserved all sacrifices. His book, through its erudition and humanity, rekindles the flame of memory and gives Paul Héraud the place he deserves in the great fresco of forgotten resistants of Provence.

Under the plane trees of Toulon, perhaps passersby will now cross the shadow of a benevolent teacher, aware of the power he had to change lives. Whether in the pages of Pellegrin’s book or in memories passed down from generation to generation, Paul Héraud remains a model of discretion and bravery, a Righteous Among the Nations who, in anonymity, knew how to be the light in one of the darkest periods of History.