Ruth Monney

Arthur et Wilhelmine Jaccard & daughter Ruth Monney Jaccard

Arthur and Wilhelmine Jaccard left their Swiss native village in 1936 and settled in a farm in Le Sappel, near Labalme sur Celdon in Ain. They were devout Protestants and believed in the Christian duty to help the persecuted. Thus, the couple helped from the beginning of the German occupation - refugees, Jews and deserters from the forced labor brigades.

Their farm was in a secluded location, surrounded by forests and therefore ideal for hiding. There were regularly twenty people in the Jaccard farm where they stayed until they could go to Switzerland. The couple and their daughter Ruth took care of their charges and ensured their safety.

When Arthur Jaccard died in October 1943, his wife continued to take care of the refugees on her farm. His daughter Ruth, born in 1919, who had left the farm in the spring of 1943, returned to live and help her mother.

Towards the end of the war, when the retreating Germans became more brutal, Sophie Markowitz and her sister Rachel, two of the refugees who had been on the farm from the fall of 1942 until the end of the war, said in their testimony how Ruth had prepared a hiding place in the forest where she would go with the Markowitz sisters and the other refugees she cared for, until the German troops left.

After the war, Rachel and Sophie continued to have warm relations with the Jaccards.

On November 28, 2007, the Yad Vashem Jerusalem Institute awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations to Mr Arthur Jaccard and his wife Mrs Wilhelmine Jaccard, and their daughter Ruth.