Louis Rouxès

In the spring of 1944, the six members of the Fribourg family were living in St.-Sulpice, in the département of Tarn. When an acquaintance who worked at the Préfecture in Toulouse told the Fribourgs about an impending roundup of Jews in the area, M. Fribourg contacted members of the underground who operated nearby, and they referred him to the head of their network, Louis Rouxes. Rouxes, his wife, their two children (aged nineteen and twenty), and one of the children’s friends lived in St.-Lieux-les-Lavaur, a village several kilometers from St.-Sulpice. In March 1944, the six Fribourgs joined the Rouxes. Thus, the small house, which could accommodate four people, had eleven people crowded into it for six months. The Fribourgs did not dare to leave the house during the day. At night, in absolute silence, they exercised and got fresh air in the front yard. The level of tension in the area escalated greatly during the last few months of the occupation because of vigorous underground activity. Rouxes went on night missions for the underground, often joined by M. Fribourg. When Allied forces invaded the Mediterranean coast of southern France on August 15, 1944, Rouxes decided to move the Fribourgs to a safer refuge far away in the mountains. With Rouxes’s assistance, the Fribourgs relocated to the village of Giroussens, where they stayed until the liberation, barely a week later, on August 21. Many years after the war, Annette Fribourg, who was just a child during the occupation, visited St.-Lieux-les-Lavaur, and spoke with elderly people who remembered the war years. She learned that the entire village knew that the Rouxes were hiding Jews, but no one talked.
On October 24, 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Louis Rouxes, his wife Amélie, and their daughter Janine as Righteous Among the Nations.