Moussa Abadi

Moussa Abadi (1910–1997) was a member of the French Resistance in southern France during World War II. With Odette Rosenstock, they saved 527 children from being taken by the Nazis and the Schutzstaffel (SS) forces.

Early life and education Moussa Abadi was born in Damascus, Syria in 1910. He attended the Jewish Alliance School in Damascus, where he learned to speak French and received a scholarship to study in France. He attended the Sorbonne, where he developed an interest in the theatre and was a member of the theatrical troupe Compagnie des Quatre Saisons.

World War II Background After Nazis invaded France, the Vichy government instituted laws that attacked the rights of Jewish people, which became increasingly intense by 1942. As the government captured children, the Jewish community looked for ways to protect the children.

Resistance movement In 1939, Abadi met Odette Rosenstock, who served as a physician during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). She worked as a physician until Vichy laws did not allow her to be employed, then she worked as a midwife. In 1942, Abadie asked Rosenstock to join him in Nice. They joined the French Resistance movement there, where they were ignored by the Italian forces and not yet subject to German invasion. In Nice, they helped Jewish families take refuge. Odette took the undercover name Sylvie Delatre. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states that "The Réseau Marcel was one of the most successful Jewish rescue networks in Vichy France." In 1995, driven by horrendous wars that resulted in the extermination of people, she wrote a book Terre de détresse Birkenau-Bergen-Belsen about her experiences in the concentration camps during the Second World War.

Moussa died in 1997.