Saint-Martin-Vésubie (; Vivaro-Alpine: ''Sant Martin de Lantosca'') is a commune of the

Alpes-Maritimes Alpes-Maritimes (; oc, Aups Maritims; it, Alpi Marittime, "Maritime Alps") is a department of France located in the country's southeast corner, on the Italian border and Mediterranean coast. Part of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, it ...

department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (; or , ; commonly shortened to PACA; en, Provence-Alps-French Riviera, italic=yes; also branded as Région Sud) is one of the eighteen administrative regions of France, the far southeastern on the mainland. Its pref ...

region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and t ...

in Southeastern

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. Established on the edge of a glacial plate, it had a population of 1,327 in 2008. It was named after the Vésubie, a local river.

History

Early years

San Martin first appears in recorded history in the 12th century, although there are archaeological remnants of a Romanized indigenous population dating back to the 1st century. The medieval castrum extends along a cliff overlooking Valley of the Madonna through which ran the old Salt Road that extended from the

Piedmont it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

to the port city of

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...

. It was part of the historic County of Nice until 1860 as ''San Martino Vesubia''. In their 1997 book "The Templar Revelation," Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince write that Saint-Martin-de-Vésubie was the "site of a legendary massacre of Templars in 1308."

Recent times

In World War II, the Alpes-Maritimes were occupied by the Italian Fourth Army from 11 November 1942 onwards. The sympathy of the Italian authorities caused the area to become a safe haven for thousands of Jewish refugees. Jews were able to achieve a modicum of safety and legal residency under the Italian authorities, who relocated them to Saint-Martin-Vésubie. The sympathy of the Italian authorities was mainly due to the work of the Italian Jewish banker

Angelo Donati Cavalier Angelo Donati (3 February 1885 – 30 December 1960) was a Jewish Italian banker and philanthropist, and a diplomat of the San Marino Republic in Paris. Biography Donati was born in Modena. Himself a Jew he was famous for saving Je ...

, who was living in Nice and convinced them to protect the Jews from French and German persecution. After the Italian Armistice in September 1943, and under direct threat from the German authorities, a thousand of Saint-Martin's Jews made the climb up the Old Salt Road mountain passes in the Gesso Valley and what they thought was the safety of Italy . Almost all the remaining Jews in Saint-Martin were arrested and transported to Auschwitz. The local gendarmerie commander,

Maréchal des logis-chef Maréchal is the French equivalent of English Marshal. Maréchale is the feminine form mainly used to denote the wife of a marshal in France. It can also refer to: Military ranks *Maréchal général des camps et armées du roi, former French dis ...

Landry Mangon and his wife Adrienne took under protection a one year old Jewish child named Jean-Claude Dreymann and another officer Joseph Fougere and his wife Yvonne took the child's five-year-old sister Cecile and presented them as their children during the Gestapo's round-up of Jews and thereby saved their lives. For this noble act and the risks they took on their lives and their families to save Jews, the families of the officers were recognised as Righteous among the Nations at a ceremony that was conducted at the town hall on 5 September 2010. The village was hit heavily by

Storm Alex Storm Alex was a powerful early-season extratropical cyclone that was particularly notable for its extreme flooding around the Mediterranean. Alex caused widespread wind and flooding damage across Europe, and at least 16 fatalities, with one more ...

in October 2020. File:The ceremony.jpg, Jean-Claude Dreymann sitting first on the left with his sister Cecile next to him File:Saint-Martin-Vésubie.jpg, A view of Saint-Martin-Vésubie from the nearby hillside File:Hotel de ville de Saint-Martin-Vésubie-2.jpg, Town hall File:Saint-Martin-Vésubie - Eglise Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption -6.JPG, Église Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption File:Saint-Martin-Vésubie et la vallée de la Vésubie vus de la route de la Colmiane.JPG, General view

Media

Saint-Martin features in the first scenes of '' Wandering Star'', the novel by

J. M. G. Le Clézio Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (; 13 April 1940), usually identified as J. M. G. Le Clézio, of French and Mauritian nationality, is a writer and professor. The author of over forty works, he was awarded the 1963 Prix Renaudot for his novel ''Le P ...

References

External links

* & (

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; o ...