Memorial Abbé Ferrand Avallon

On the side wall of his house hangs a memorial plaque for Abbé Bernard Ferrand (°1900), a French priest who lived there during the Second World War.
After the seminary, he was ordained a priest in 1923 and appointed to the Saint-Jacques school in Joigny.
In 1925, he founded the Florimontains holiday camp in Tamié (Plancherine) in Savoie, inspired by the principles of scouting and the monastic ideal. The success was so great that Father Ferrand, to his great regret, had to turn away many children due to lack of space. Due to the continued success, his holiday camps were later expanded with two newly built camp locations.
In 1927, he was appointed vicar of the cathedral of Auxerre. However, an eye disease made him almost blind. Then, on 27 July 1929, he was appointed chaplain of the Jeanne-d'Arc school in Avallon, where he received a lot of help.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was unfit for any military service because of his eyesight, but he refused to remain inactive in the rear and joined the resistance in 1941. To this end, he contacted the SFIO, the socialist party, most of whose leaders joined the resistance during the German occupation.
A group was formed around Abbé Ferrand in 1942, with some members of the young guard of Avallon (sports association), a group that was added to the intelligence network of the Alliance a little later.
He was in charge of this resistance group in the department of Yonne, under the code name Pintade2. The Avallon group was part of the eastern sector of the network, Forteresse. Through their Autun transmitter he was in contact with London and thus passed on military intelligence to the British. In this way he was able to stop the British plan to bomb the Cresentend dam, which would have been a disaster for the valley and its inhabitants. With his deputy François Robb and his wife, he took in English and American pilots and Jews. He organised their evacuation with the help of Auguste Chandelier, a train conductor in Avallon, who hid them in the coal bunker or in the water tanks. Abbé Ferrand disguised himself in a railway outfit to cross the demarcation line.
On September 16, 1943, the Germans launched Operation "Gibet" and succeeded in arresting Colonel Faye, head of the Alliance network, and other officials at the station of Aulnay-sous-Bois. From then on, arrests were organized in the provinces.

On September 22, 1943, Father Ferrand was arrested in Avallon near the cemetery. From Fresnes, he was transferred to the Schirmeck camp in Alsace. Although he was terribly tortured during long interrogations, he remained silent.
In the camp, he was a moral support for the fellow prisoners of barrack 10, among other things by secretly celebrating mass.
On September 1, 1944, he was transferred with other members of the Alliance to the Struthof camp where they were all executed on September 2.

A plaque in the crematorium commemorates their sacrifice.
A square in his hometown, a street in Avallon and numerous plaques in the department commemorate his commitment to the service of France. Posthumously elevated to the rank of Knight of the Legion of Honor and to the rank of captain in the French army, he is one of the 195 whose names are engraved in the Pantheon in Paris. In 1946, his faithful friends decided to continue his holiday center Florimontain. Today, the association is still very successful in the spirit of Abbé Ferrand.arresting Colonel Faye, head of the Alliance network, and other officials.

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: Wim Wouters