Yad Vashem to honor Frenchman

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The family of Frenchman Yves Criou will accept a medal and certificate in his honor at a ceremony at Yad Vashem.

The event honoring Criou declared a Righteous Among the Nations, will take place at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem on Sunday morning.

His children Francoise Criou and Reuven Kagan will accept the award and the French Ambassador in Israel Christophe Bigot will also be present.

Criou, a religious Catholic from France, married Lisa (Lisette)Kahan, the daughter of an observant Jewish family who had emigrated to France from Russia in 1936.

During World War 2 he was drafted into the French Army and captured by the Germans but succeeded in escaping and returning to France.

On his return, he worked with his brother in law Julien Kletjman who was later arrested and sent to Auschwitz where he died.

Criou agreed to hide Kletjman's wife and son and other family members from the Nazis.

In March 1944 fearing the Nazis may discover the family members he moved them all to an apartment in Paris and to support them opened a radio repair shop in the basement.

Shortly after, the Allied forces liberated France.

Criou died in September 1981.

In March this year the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous Among Nations at Yad Vashem decided to award Criou the tit