Sabine Zlatin

Sabine Zlatin (13 January 1907 – 21 September 1996) was a Polish-born French woman who hid Jewish children during World War II.

Zlatin was born Sabine Chwast in a Jewish family in Warsaw. As a young woman she moved to France, where she married Miron Zlatin. With him she ran a poultry farm in Landas in the north of France. Both received French citizenship in 1939.

After the outbreak of World War II, Sabine Zlatin begun to train with the Red Cross. When the Germans advanced to France, the Zlatins moved to Montpellier, where Sabine Zlatin was posted to a military hospital. After the formation of the Vichy France government in 1941, she was forced to leave.

At the Hérault prefecture in the French-occupied zone, she contacted OSE, a charity for Jewish children. She helped to secure the release of children who had been interned in the camps at Agde and Rivesaltes.

When the Germans occupied the rest of the France in 1943, Zlatin took 17 children with her to the Italian-occupied zone. Through the recommendation of the sub-prefect of Belley, she received permission to use a house in Izieu, 60 miles from Lyon in the Rhône Valley, and founded the Hérault refugee children's home La Maison d'Izieu ("Children's Home of Izieu), where Jewish children were hidden.

However, on 6 April 1944, the Lyon Gestapo, led by Klaus Barbie, raided the house and took away all 44 of the children and the seven adults who were taking care of them. Zlatin herself was elsewhere at the time. Forty-two of...
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