Who wants to save the Swiss maternity of Elne, a high place of memory?

The municipality of Elne, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, has opened a public subscription to finance the renovation work of the Swiss maternity ward. “At the end of April, a technical visit to the monument revealed problems requiring rapid security of the place and temporary closure to the public”, details the municipality. According to his estimates, the cost of the restoration amounts to more than 500,000 euros.

The Elne maternity hospital, located about ten kilometers south-east of Perpignan, is both a witness to a dark period in history and a magnificent lesson in humanity. The building was created in 1902. But nothing at the time predestined it to go down in history. Château d’en Bardou was commissioned by Eugène Bardou, whose family had a fortune in cigarette paper, under the Job brand.

The hell of giving birth in refugee camps

Abandoned, the building was discovered in 1939, rented and rehabilitated at the instigation of Elisabeth Eidenbenz, a young Swiss teacher who became a nurse. She was looking for a building to allow Spanish women who had fled Francoism to give birth in decent conditions and support the first weeks of their children’s lives. An essential support which made it possible to reduce the very high mortality rate which affected mothers and newborns in the concentration camps of the Pyrénées-Orientales, where the Spanish refugees from the Retirada were parked.

The maternity continued to operate during the Second World War, welcoming women of twenty-two nationalities and of all faiths. In particular mothers from the nearby Rivesaltes camp, but also Jewish women, some of whom, under false identities, were able to escape deportation. 597 children were officially born there from 1939 to 1944. In particular a little Ruben, whose mother, Remei Oliva, died at the age of 104 on May 13. She was the last living woman to give birth there.

Eidenbenz honored sixty years later

The name of Elisabeth Eidenbenz has long been forgotten. It was the child of these children from the Swiss maternity ward, born in 1941 and saved from certain death, who fifty years later found his trace in an Austrian village. In 2001, the nurse obtained the distinction of “Righteous among the nations” by Yad Vashem, the International Institute for the Memory of the Holocaust. Then the Legion of Honor in 2007.

In the meantime, the municipality of Elne has acquired the maternity ward to turn it into a museum. It became a historic building in 2013. If the State and the various communities should partly finance its restoration, the addition promises to be heavy for the municipality. “As the works will be expensive, we will open a popular subscription in North and South Catalonia. You can now visit the gardens, we are preparing an outdoor exhibition, ”says the mayor (PCF) Nicolas Garcia. The terms are mentioned on the website from the community.


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