Dr. René Quenouille
René Quenouille was born on December 6, 1884 in Sarlat-la-Caneda in France.
In 1925, after qualifying as a doctor, René Quenouille opened an X-ray practice near Paris.
He was a member of the Communist Party and in 1935 became deputy mayor of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges.
During the German occupation, René Quenouille and his wife Yvonne joined a French resistance group.
René, Yvonne and two of their daughters were arrested by the Gestapo on March 3, 1943.
The women were released, but Quenouille was sent to a prison near Paris and initially sentenced to death.
Instead, on October 16, 1943, the SS deported him to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where he was put to work as a prison doctor. Former prisoners later recalled that he had helped French and Soviet prisoners in particular.
On July 17, 1944, he was transferred to Neuengamme concentration camp, where he ran the sick bay’s X-ray department. On the arrival of the 20 children, his job was to take care of them medically.
He tried to help the children by secretly boiling the bacteria solution to make it ineffective before it was administered to the children.
René Quenouille was hanged at Bullenhuser Damm aged 61.
In his home-town of Sarlat-la-Caneda in the Dordogne, a day care centre for children was named after René Quenouille in 1980.