John Henry Weidner papers

John Henry Weidner (1912-1994) was born John Hendrik Weidner in Brussels on 22 October 1912, the son of Dutch parents who lived in Belgium and France, where Weidner's father served as a minister in the Seventh Day Adventist church. After the German occupation of Paris in June 1940, Weidner moved to Lyon, in the non-occupied (Vichy) part of the country, establishing a textile business there. Due to his religious convictions, he began helping Dutch citizens who were interned in camps near Lyon, but by 1942, expanded the scope of his work to begin helping refugees who had escaped from the Netherlands, Belgium, and German-occupied parts of France to find their way to the Swiss border, or to Spain. In this work, he helped political refugees, persecuted Jews, and later, Allied airmen who had been shot down over German-occupied territories, find their way to safety. The escape route, dubbed the "Dutch-Paris Line," was used by Weidner and over 300 people who worked with him, to rescue over 1,000 people, including over 800 Jews from the Netherlands. In 1955, Weidner immigrated to the United States, and in 1978 he was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. Weidner died in Monterey Park, California on 21 May 1994.