Robert Job

Origins and early life

Robert Job was born at Imling, in the Moselle, on 31 January 1907 and died at Strasbourg on 6 June 1995.

Work and career

Mobilised in September 1938, he was serving as supply officer for the prefecture of the Hautes-Alpes in the southern zone when, as the sources state plainly, the proclamation of the Vichy government's anti-Jewish laws forced him out of his post: the statute of the Jews applied to him, which is how the record establishes that he was a Jew. He then joined the Œuvre de secours aux enfants, took charge of its children's home at Poulouzat in June 1942 and in 1943 became inspector of all the OSE homes of the Limousin.

He was arrested in February 1944 and worked with the Garel network, which hid Jewish children with host families under false names or took them clandestinely across the border into Switzerland. After the liberation he directed the OSE's care of children, opening twenty-five houses that took in more than two thousand orphans, among them four hundred and twenty-six survivors of Buchenwald.

Recognition

He was secretary general of the OSE from 1947 to 1973, sat on the world direction of the Union OSE into the 1960s and was made honorary vice-president in 1988. He was a knight of the Legion of Honour for military service, held the Croix de guerre 1939-1945 and was an officer of the Ordre national du Mérite.