The Jewish psychotherapist Madeleine Dreyfus worked for the children’s aid organization OSE (Œuvre de secours aux enfants) in Lyon from 1941. She placed Jewish children in hiding places in the countryside for the group’s covert branch, known as the Garel network. One of the places where she found refuge for children was the area around the Protestant village of Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon. She also arranged food for them, transporting it and forged papers. She made notes on the children and their helpers in a booklet.
During a raid on a children’s home in Lyon in November 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Drancy assembly and transit camp. Fortunately, she did not have her notebook with her, so no further arrests were made. In Drancy, she gave false information, passing herself off as the wife of a prisoner of war. That status prevented her deportation to Auschwitz. In May 1944, however, she was taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She survived the camp and a two-week odyssey in an evacuation transport, and returned to France in 1945.