Erich Schwam, a Jewish refugee who arrived in the village with his mother and father in 1943, donated an amount of at least a few hundred thousand euros to the municipality in south-central France, according to the notary in charge of his will. .
“We are very honored and will use the amount according to Mr. Schwam’s will,” the city’s deputy mayor Denise Vallat told CNN on Saturday.
In the will of November 9, 2020, Schwam wrote that he wanted to ‘thank them’ [the village residents] for the welcome many offered me in the field of education. He asked if the money would be used to fund scholarships and schools in the village.
Major contributions will also be made to three foundations that support health workers, children with leukemia and animal rights, according to a town hall press release.
According to the City Hall website, after 1940, Le Chambon and nearby villages welcomed Jewish refugees, mostly children. Barack Obama mentioned the village in his remarks at the Holocaust Days of Remembrance Ceremony in April 2009 and Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, awarded the town the title of Righteousness in 1990.
Schwam’s father was a doctor, and his mother helped set up a library in the Rivesaltes camp, one of many set up by the Vichy regime to imprison Jews. Thousands were transported from there to Auschwitz, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.
Friedel Reiter, a young Swiss social worker who was volunteering to help refugees at the time, recorded the family’s information and it is likely that she helped them move to Le Chambon when the Rivesaltes camp closed in 1942, the town hall said.
When he was just 12, Schwam was taken into the care of Secours Suisse, a sub-sector of the Red Cross of Switzerland that specialized in helping children during the war, wherever his mother worked. Schwam enrolled in pharmacy degree at the University of Leon in 1950 and graduated in 1957.
The town hall is not sure whether he returned to Le Chambon regularly and asks for more information about “the little Viennese Jewish boy” who was so generous more than 75 years later.
“We didn’t know Mr. Schwam, we’re now trying to determine who he was and what happened to him here,” Vallat said.
The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2020 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.