Historic Swiss maternity hospital in France under threat
In 1939, Zurich teacher Elisabeth Eidenbenz opened a maternity hospital in a small village in the French Pyrenees. Hundreds of women to whom she offered shelter gave birth to more than 600 children there. It was later transformed into a place of remembrance, but now it is threatened with closure.
In a small auditorium with exposed stone walls in the cinema of Elne, a town of some 10,000 inhabitants south of Perpignan in the eastern Pyrenees, about 100 members of the Union of Swiss Associations in France and their guests listen attentively as the mayor, Nicolas Garcia, recounts the extraordinary story of Elisabeth Eidenbenz.
The audience is quiet, except for a few “ohs” of amazement or pity in response to his anecdotes, which are full of admiration and affection for her.
“She got straight to the point. She was a real character,” recalls Garcia, 50. He knew her for eight years. And it took character to stand up to the German, French and Spanish authorities.
Between the Spanish Civil War and Second World War
In 1939, as the Spanish Civil Wardrew to an end, thousands of people fled Spain and crossed the Pyrenees to France, which had just entered the Second World War. They were herded into unsanitary camps on the French Mediterranean coast.
It was against this backdrop that Eidenbenz, a young teacher from Zurich, arrived in France. She was a member of Swiss Relief for Children, a Protestant organisation whose aim was to provide neutral, humanitarian aid to civilian populations affected by conflict.
Witnessing the human and health catastrophe unfolding in the camps, she had the idea of setting up a maternity unit to enable pregnant women to give birth in decent conditions.
“Every morning, she would go to the market in Elne, and that’s how she came across a large, abandoned building,” Garcia says. Her determination, combined with logistical and financial support from Swiss Relief, enabled a radical transformation. In December 1939, the Swiss Maternity Hospital in Elne opened its doors.
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Deliberate ignorance
Over four years, more than 600 children were born there. “For the women who arrived after months in the camps, going through the doors of the maternity ward was like pushing open the gates of paradise,” according to the mayor of Elne.
The women came from Spain, but also from Germany, Austria and what was then Czechoslovakia. Some were Jewish, some were Sinti or Roma, others were Resistance fighters.
Eidenbenz never asked for papers. She chose not to know the origins of the women and children she took in.
But she still had to face the Gestapo, the secret police of the Third Reich. “One day, two German soldiers came to the maternity home to carry out checks. Elisabeth told them that the maternity hospital was Swiss territory and that they had no right to enter. Imagine the nerve of this young woman, not even 30 years old,” Garcia says.
The maternity hospital was eventually closed by the Nazis in April 1944.
A memory revived
Eidenbenz left France to look after children in Vienna, Austria. A humble woman, she never made a big deal of her achievements, and the story of the Elne maternity hospital could have been forgotten.
But in the 1990s, children who had been born in Elne traced her and exposed her story to the general public. In 2002 Eidenbenz was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial. She died in 2011 at the age of 97.
The municipality of ElneExternal link, the owner of the maternity home since 2005, has undertaken to restore it and transform it into a place of remembrance and education for peace. In 2013, it was listed as a historic monument. Exhibitions, filmed testimonies and period objects retrace this chapter of Swiss history.
A site in danger
But now the site is in danger. A lack of funds has meant that urgent repairs have been postponed and the building is decaying. It is partially closed to the public.
Elne town council has launched several appeals for help. It has managed to raise a few hundred thousand euros, but this amount is insufficient for the scale of the work, which the mayor estimates will cost €4 million (CHF3.75 million).
“We see no way to refurbish this place without Swiss help,” Garcia says. He hopes that the €4,000 donation made by the Union of Swiss Associations in France will be matched by others and that the event in Elne will bear fruit among the Swiss consuls and ambassadors present.
In short, he hopes that Elisabeth Eidenbenz “will one day receive the recognition she deserves from the country where she was born”.
Edited by Samuel Jaberg. Adapted from French by Catherine Hickley/ts
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