How did an Irish woman born in Cork in 1908 to a pharmacist and his wife end up saving over 200 Jewish children in the French Pyrenees during WWII?
She was a bright young woman, a scholar at Trinity Dublin where she earned a first in French and Spanish literature. She received a scholarship in International Studies at the London School of Economics and another to study in Geneva, Switzerland.
If she could have been expected to enter academic life, she did not follow the normal path. Instead she joined the University of London Ambulance Unit and was assigned to a children's hospital in Almeria, Spain.
The left-thinking Republicans were fighting the Second Spanish Republic made up of monarchists, fascists and conservatives in 1937 when Mary arrived.
1940 found her across the border. A refugee camp at Rivesaltes held refugees including Jews. The conditions were filthy. Prisoners were regularly transferred to concentration camps. By 1942 Jewish children were added to the deportation lists. Using her car trunk she took as many children as possible to safe locations.
Her activities were not unnoticed, and she was arrested in 1943, imprisoned in Toulouse before being sent to Fresnes prison, south of Paris. Torture was normal for this Gestapo run prison. She survived six months before her release. She immediately returned to her work of saving children whenever she could.
After the war she settled in the Perpignan, Canet, and Saint Marie-la-Mer and bore two children to her husband Roger Danjou. She died in 2002.
Mary was not want to call attention to herself, spurning the French Legion of Honour, the highest civilian award that country offers. However after her death honors continue including:
- Righteous Among the Nations (Israel)
- Trish Murphy Award at the Network Ireland Business Woman of the Year
- A bridge named after in Cork
- Mary Elmes Prize in Holocaust Studies distributed by the Holocaust Educational Trust Ireland
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