Abbe Louis Salys, a Belgian priest who helped have Jewish children from the Nazis during the German occupation of Belgium, arrived ?ere today to visit two Jewish girls whom he sheltered for two years. The Israel government gave him free passage on an Israel plane in appreciation of his work.
The two girls, who are now members of a collective settlement in Israel, ?old a Jewish engineer in Tel Aviv the dramatic story of how their parents were killed ?y the Nazis and how the priest sheltered them and their two brothers. Not only did ?e not try to convert then, but he watched over their Hebrew prayers and when one of the brothers reached the age of Bar Mitzvah, the priest procured phylacteries for him.
The elder boy, the two girls said, worked as an agricultural laborer, giving all his earnings to the priest. Nevertheless, when the children left for Israel, the priest and his housekeeper — who is also here on a visit — returned 5,500 France to the boy, every franc he had earned, refusing to accept anything in payment for the support of the four children during the three years they had lived with him, although he was a poor man.
After hearing the story the Jewish engineer, who prefers not to have his name published, was so touched that he wrote to the priest and invited him to visit the children in Israel. Because of the priest’s meager earnings, the engineer and a group of friends arranged to finance his visit, with the free passage provided by the Israel Ministry of Finance.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
