Père Jacques

Père Jacques de Jésus ( born January 29, 1900 in Barentin as Lucien Bunel, † June 2, 1945 in Linz ) was a French priest of the Carmelite Order, who was deported because of concealment of Jewish children in the concentration camp at Gusen against the Nazi occupation troops in France.

Biography

Père Jacques de Jésus - short Père Jacques, was born as the fourth of eight children of Mr and Mrs Alfred Joseph Bunel (1871-1943) and Zoé Pauline Pontif ( 1868-1952 ). Already at an early age he was fascinated by the priesthood and prophesied: "I will be a great priest ," which initially came with his parents to rejection.

With continued staunch desire to become a priest, he entered the " Petit séminaire de Rouen " in October 1912. After graduation in 1919 he moved to the " Grand séminaire de Rouen ". In 1920 he did his military service in Montlignon. Already at that time he was fascinated by life in solitude and silence, thinking to enter the Cistercian Abbey of La Trappe.

Having returned to Rouen, he was admitted to the local seminary on 23 February 1922. In December 1924 Lucien Bunel was a deacon and was ordained by the Archbishop of Rouen André du Bois de La Villerabel a priest in 1925.

From 1925 to 1931 worked Lucien Bunel as diocesan priests among other things as an educator, teaching English and religion and as a pastor. On 28 August 1931, he left the diocese of Rouen and entered as a postulant at the Carmelite. There he chose to garb the religious name Père Jacques de Jésus. September 14, 1931 to September 15, 1932 he made his canonical year of novitiate in Lille.

In March 1934, the Provincial of the Carmelites, to found a school in Avon and to entrust the management Père Jacques decided. The " Petit Collège Saint -Therese de l' Enfant Jesus " for boys was opened on the grounds of the Carmelite monastery on October 12, 1934 in Avon.

After France declared war on 3 September 1939 Père Jacques was called up for military service as a sergeant in 1940 and ran for five months in captivity. The Petit Collège was closed until 1941.

In 1943, with the consent of his Provincial, he took three Jewish children under a false name in his boarding school on, to save them from deportation by the Nazi occupation forces in France. These were led by Hans Helmut Michel (aka Jean Bonnet ), Maurice Schlosser ( aka Maurice Sabatier ) and Jacques France Halpern (aka Jacques Dupre ). The father of Maurice Schlosser he hid in a population of Avon. A fourth boy, Maurice Bas, he hired as workers in the monastery. He also gave the Jewish botanist Lucien Because a job as a teacher in the school.

At the same time, he got in touch for the Resistance to help people who were relying on the run from the compulsory labor service (Service du travail obligatoire ).

On January 15, 1944 Père Jacques was arrested along with the hidden Jewish children from the Gestapo. At the information about the hidden children, the Gestapo had arrived, after a verhaftetes member of the Resistance had been interrogated under torture.

In parting, Père Jacques called on a small platform standing, all gathered in the schoolyard students to: "Goodbye, kids. See you soon! ". Despite the cries of the Gestapo chiefs to shut up, the students and teachers answered: "Goodbye, my Father! " And applauded.

The hidden Jewish children by him were first taken to the transit camp Drancy and deported to the concentration camp Auschwitz little later. They reached the camp with the convoy 67 on February 6, 1944, and died on the same day in the gas chambers.

Père Jacques initially remained until March 5, 1944 at Fontainebleau in prison custody and was then transferred to the concentration camp at Compiegne Royallieu. From there we went on April 21, 1944 in the Gestapo camp New Bremm in Saarbrücken, he was eventually deported from there on 5 May 1944 in the concentration camp at Gusen I.

There Père Jacques coined in spite of the very severe conditions of imprisonment in a concentration camp in the memory of his comrades as an exemplary Christian one who stood up for his fellow prisoners in the camp and tireless efforts undertaken to help other prisoners and to comfort them.

After many months of exhaustion in concentration camp Gusen I Père Jacques was laid on 25 April 1945 with 800 other Frenchmen in order to repatriation in the Mauthausen concentration camp. There he witnessed on May 5, 1945, the liberation of the concentration camps by troops of the 3rd U.S. Army. From his French comrades, he was nominated for the office of President of the French National Committee of the concentration camp of Mauthausen.

But his health was too poor for this office already, Pere Jacques, a tuberculosis disease had contracted, was very weak and malnourished. Therefore, Père Jacques was brought by his comrades in the "Hospital of St. Elizabeth " to Linz, where he died on June 2, 1945.

His comrades were preparing the deceased on 21 June 1945 in the town hall of the city of Linz an honorable farewell before his mortal remains were transferred on a plane to France. Père Jacques de Jésus found in the little cemetery of the Carmelite monastery in Avon laid to rest. A simple white cross marks his grave.

A lasting tribute to the man of the church realized the former pupil of Père Jacques and great French director Louis Malle in 1987 in the film " Au revoir les enfants " ( Goodbye, Children). Malle reconstructed in the courageous defense of the persecuted Jewish children, which ultimately sealed his fate in the concentration camp. The key scene of the arrest Père Jacques', which is also closing scene, gave the film its name.

The road at the Carmelite Monastery of Avon was renamed in his honor in rue Père Jacques. A small place in his hometown of Barentin was named after him on the east side of the church Saint -Martin. There remembers him a sculpture of the sculptor Henri Bouchard.

1985 ranked Yad Vashem Père Jacques a under the Righteous Among the Nations.

On the part of the Carmelite Order in 1997 initiated a process of beatification for Père Jacques.