Gilbert Lesage

Following a chance encounter in Vichy with his friend M. Laborie, Lesage was appointed head of mission of the newly formed Compagnons de France under the Ministry for Family and Youth, swiftly rising to head of department first in Vichy and then in Lyon. Other appointments quickly followed one another. In October 1940, Lesage was appointed inspector general of the Refugee department under the Ministry of the Interior. On 6 January 1941, Lesage was made director of the department for refugees under the director general of the Sûreté nationale. Then barely more than six weeks later, on 19 February, Lesage was chosen to head the newly created Service social des formations d'étrangers that would in November of that same year become the Service social des étrangers (SSE) [Social Department for Aliens]. This appointment was made by Henri Maux, who led the Commissariat de la lutte contre le chômage (CLC), a body formed in October 1940 to combat high unemployment across the nation. Maux was in charge of the CLC in France's southern unoccupied zone.[7] During its three years' existence, the CLC was successful in significantly reducing unemployment.

The SSE, created within the southern zone of the CLC, grew from a staff of 14 in July 1941 when first active to some 350 by 1944, and its budget grew from 24,800 francs in 1941 to 74 million francs in 1944.[8] Besides the regular staff, Lesage worked clandestinely on behalf of refugees with "agents camouflés",[9] such as Léon Meiss, Jean Pochard, Charles Morani and Jean-Philippe Bloch.[10] On 1 January 1943, the SSE became the Contrôle social des étrangers and with the closure of the CLC was attached on May 1 to the Ministry of Labour and its head office moved from Vichy to Paris. From July 1943 the Contrôle social des étrangers was entrusted with the management of the camps of the Ministry of the Interior.

Lesage was actively involved throughout his employment in helping Polish refugees. He warned them of possible police raids and enabled many of them to cross the border into Spain to join up with active Polish forces. For this work Lesage was awarded the Polish Cross of Merit with Swords in 1945.

In August 1942 the Vichy authorities began arresting Jews in France's unoccupied southern zone. Lesage learnt on 16 August of a large-scale "ramassage" or rounding-up planned and decided to warn Jewish and other rescue organizations of the impending raid. In particular he warned Édouard Simon who ran the children's home of the Éclaireurs israélites de France at Moissac.[11] A few days later, assisted by Amitiés chrétiennes, Dr Joseph Weill of the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) and Alexandre Glasberg (Abbé Glasberg), Lesage was personally able to make a case for exemption for more than 400 Jews at a camp in a disused barracks at Vénissieux near Lyon and thus save them from deportation. Now that exemption from deportation of children under the age of 18 had been cancelled, Lesage decided to go by an official directive of a few days earlier that stated that "when interested parties do not request to take their children with them, the latter shall be put in the care of the Social Department for Aliens".[12] On the night of 28 August, Lesage and various social bodies attempted to persuade parents at the camp to entrust them with their children. In this way he was able to save 104 Jewish children, who were safely taken to the premises of the Éclaireurs israélites at Lyon. The same method was used in other camps where Jews were concentrated; near Clermont-Ferrand, Limoges, Macon and Montluçon.[13]

Lesage's behaviour aroused suspicion and he was reported to the occupying authorities in Paris. On 8 April 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo and interned at the Caserne des Tourelles, Paris. He had the good fortune to escape deportation, being set free by the Résistance in autumn 1944. According to René Nodot, Gilbert Lesage had saved the lives of some 100,000 refugees.[14]

After the war, Lesage held various functions, among them: regional director in British and American-occupied Germany of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) (for displaced persons and refugees); journalist for Les Routiers in London; director of the Office intercommunal d'HLM de Briey (near Metz), managing Le Corbusier's third Cité Radieuse (built in 1959–1961);[15] property negotiator at the time of the transfer of Les Halles wholesale fresh food market to Rungis.[16] In later life he deposited archival material at the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine (C.D.J.C.) at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris.