Henri Teillard

The Samuel family, a couple with a son and daughter, and the children’s grandmother and aunt, lived in Paris. In June 1940, the family fled southward and settled in Toulon (Var), because M. Samuel’s mother, brother, and sister lived nearby in the small town of La Garde. On September 13, 1943, M. Samuel was told that his mother urgently wished to see him. He hurried to see her and was arrested by Germans who had set a trap for him after arresting the rest of the family. Only one member of the Samuel family in La Garde, M. Samuel’s younger sister, escaped by climbing over a wall and hiding at the neighbors’ house. The neighbors contacted the girl’s teacher, Germaine Teillard, told her what had happened, and entrusted the girl to her. Teillard, who also taught the girl’s cousin, Jean-Claude, in Toulon, immediately traveled to Toulon to tell the Samuels that their relatives had been arrested. She took the remaining members of the family to the home of her parents, Henri and Alice, in La Garde, where she and her twin sister Suzanne lived.
Henri Teillard began his professional career working in Ethiopia, first for a commercial company, and then for the Ethiopian railway, where his brother in law had a prominent job. After the First World War he suffered economically, worked for a lumber company and retired in 1930. At the time the Samuel children arrived at their home, Henri Teillard was retired. During his professional life he had a commericial business in Ethiopia and later invested in Morocco, Algeria and before his retirement in 1930, in Germany. The family were devout Catholic and very patriotic.
The two Samuel children and their cousin were hidden by Teillards’ in their own home. Teillard then arranged shelter for the mother, grandmother, and aunt in the convent of La Visitation. The Mother Superior of the convent, Marie Thérèse Roux (recognized as Righteous.), and her assistant, Sister Jeanne Hertel (Recognized as Righteous) treated the three women excellently. Whenever the Germans searched the convent for hidden Jews, the fugitives were led through secret passageways, to avoid discovery. Once, when the Teillards heard that the Germans were about to search their house, the three Jewish children were taken to the convent, where they spent approximately two weeks. On another occasion, the opposite occurred: when the convent was searched, the women were taken to the Teillards. Eventually, when the Teillards realized the magnitude of the danger, the Samuels were all relocated, first to a convent in Montpellier and later to Langogne, in the département of Lozère, where they found safe refuge.
On November 13, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized Suzanne and Germaine Teillard and their parents Henri and Alice Teillard as Righteous Among the Nations.
In 2012 Andre Teillard, the grandson of Henri and Alice Teillard and the nephew of Germaine and Suzanne wrote a letter to Yad Vashem, that the Teillards never spoke of their wartime rescue of the Samuels and that the family only learned of their courageous deeds when the title of Righteous was awarded. He added: "My sisters and I were very touched by Jean-Claude Samuel's gratitude, his telling Yad Vashem about his rescue, and for his writing to our aunts for several decades, thanking them again and again."