Maria Corbat lived in Villes-les-Blamont, a village in the département of Doubs in the Jura Mountains near the Swiss border. Corbat, an elderly, frail, and childless peasant, took care of her husband, who was even older and paralyzed. One winter evening, three women knocked on her door. They were Sonia Winischki and her daughters, Inge and Baerbel. The Winischki family, Jews who had fled from Berlin to Belgium and then to Roubaix in northern France, owed their lives to the kindness of the French policeman Léon Coghe and his wife Germaine (q.v.) and Pastor Marcel Pasche (q.v.). M. Winischki and his son had been smuggled over the border into Switzerland, but two attempts to smuggle his wife and their two daughters failed. The first time, the guide betrayed them, and the second time, the guards shot and killed their guide. Mme Winischki and her daughters managed to escape from the guards but spent the rest of the stormy winter night adrift on the French side, not knowing where to go. Thus, they arrived at Maria Corbat’s door. They did not know her but asked to be let in. At first, without opening the door, Corbat explained that unfortunately she could not let them in. The locality was under curfew and the German patrols shot at anything that moved. Finally she relented and let the three women in. She sheltered them for nearly ten days before escorting them back to Seloncourt, where she placed them in the care of Pastor Rufenach, since they despaired of any further attempt to cross the border into Switzerland. Maria Corbat did not belong to an organized rescue network. She followed the dictates of her conscience, taking the three women in and then accompanying them, without concern for the risks.

On June 3, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Maria Corbat as Righteous Among the Nations.