Roslï Näf

Roslï Näf
File:Third Red Cross roll call LCCN2002708943.tif Red Cross poster
Born	Roslï Näf 1911 Glarus, Switzerland
Died	1996 Denmark
Nationality	Swiss
Occupation	Red Cross nurse
Known for	Risking life to save 90 Jewish children in Vichy France
Awards	Righteous Among the Nations

Roslï Näf (1911 in Glarus, Switzerland – 1996) was a Swiss Red Cross nurse, notable for taking great risks to save the lives of 90 Jewish children during some of the worst years of the Holocaust in Europe.

Career

After spending three years assisting Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Africa, Näf worked with the Swiss International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) between 1941 and 1942. Shortly after beginning work with the Red Cross, she was assigned to direct the care and protection of 100 Jewish children and adults at the Chateau de la Hille in Ariège, in Nazi-occupied France. Similar to Kindertransport, where Jewish children were sent by their German parents to live in safety in the United Kingdom, parents in Belgium sent their children to live in France after Belgium was occupied, expecting them to live safely until the war ended. However, France was also occupied shortly after Belgium. Most of the children would never see their parents again, as most of their parents were taken to concentration camps, where they eventually died.

In August 1942, French police arrested 42 of the Jewish teenagers under Näf's care, taking them to LeVernet internment camp, from where they were to be deported to Auschwitz. Horrified, she spent the next two days making her way by bicycle, bus and taxi to locate them. After finding the teenagers, she insisted that those in charge immediately release them all, who she called "her children." They were let go only hours before they were to be shipped by boxcar to Auschwitz. Inge Bleier, one of those children, recalls that Näf, with her blonde hair, always had a stern look on her face, had steely blue eyes, and "conveyed a sense of purposefulness and authority."

Although Näf obtained the children's freedom, she was refused permission to take them to neutral Switzerland, where their lives would no longer be at risk. To work around that barrier, she made them fake IDs, gave them train fare, and with the help of members of the French Resistance, helped most to escape occupied France into Switzerland, across the border. On the first attempt, however, five teenagers were caught by Nazis, and three of them were sent to Auschwitz where they were killed. By the war's end, Switzerland had itself refused entry to over 30,000 fleeing Jews, most of whom were then killed in Nazi death camps.

Because Näf acted independently and without first asking for Red Cross approval, they fired her after Nazi and French officials complained. According to Red Cross documents, for intervening to help the children escape France, the Red Cross unanimously decided to "totally distance itself from director Roslï Näf." Bleier, one of the teenagers, in hindsight realizes that after helping Jewish children escape, "she was in big trouble. She had been turned into a scapegoat. Her career with the Swiss Red Cross was likely over." Ninety of the original children under her protection survived the war. One of those surviving children, Walter H. Reed, whose parents and younger brothers were murdered, recalled Näf's sacrifice:

For these acts—protecting the Jewish youngsters, obtaining their release from Le Vernet, and enabling many to escape into Switzerland—Roslï Näf was summoned before the chief of the Swiss Legation in Vichy and dismissed from her post at La Hille.

Recognition

After the war, Näf settled in Denmark. In 1989, she was named "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Only one other Red Cross worker, Friedrich Born, was likewise named by Yad Vashem for saving approximately 11,000 Hungarian Jews. Swiss filmmaker Jacqueline Veuve directed a film about the life of Näf, entitled The Chain, in 1987. The story was based on the book by Anne-Marie Im Hof-Piguet, and produced by Aquarius Films in Lausanne. In September 2014, a monument was unveiled in le Pont, France, near the border with Switzerland, to honor war heroes, including Näf.