Marie-Louise Charpentier

Marie-Louise Charpentier, also known as Lily Charpentier (1905-1998), was a French nurse, social worker and member of the Resistance in Brittany during the Second World War. The youngest of nine children, she was born in Rennes on 26 November 1905, trained as a nurse and then became a social worker. In occupied Rennes she distributed leaflets, helped a Polish couple escape deportation and helped young people avoid compulsory labour service. In 1943 she hid a Jewish woman, Malka Engelstein, and her two grandchildren on a farm after the Gestapo raided their home, then arranged their journey through Paris to relatives in the south of France. For this she was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1990, the first person in Ille-et-Vilaine to receive the title. She died in Rennes on 24 June 1998.