ALEXANDRE GLASBERG
May
27,
2008
This is an archived article. It originally appeared on May 27, 2008. Some information may be outdated.
Alexandre Glasberg was born to a Jewish family
in the Ukraine in 1902. He and his brother, Vila,
came to believe in Jesus and emigrated to
France in the early 1930s. Alexandre attended
seminary and was ordained a priest in 1938. In
1940 he began hiding political refugees from the
Nazis. Glasberg also worked with Oeuvre de
Secours aux Enfants (OSE), the Jewish
organization for the rescue of children, to save
refugees from internment camps in France, most
of whom were Jews. He personally falsified files
to gain the release of hundreds of Jews, many of
them children. The Nazis captured his brother,
Vila, thinking he was Alexandre. In order to
protect his brother, Vila did not deny it. The
Nazis arrested, deported and murdered him.
Alexandre evaded the Gestapo. After the war,
he helped facilitate the emigration of Holocaust
survivors to Mandatory Palestine (and later, to the
State of Israel) and mass emigrations of Jews from
Iraq, Morocco and Egypt. He died in France in
1981. Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and
Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, recognized
Alexandre and Vila as
“Righteous Among the
Nations” in 2004. It is
likely the Glasberg
brothers would
have preferred to
be identified as
Jews and not
as “among
the nations.”
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