Starting in 1941, thousands of Jewish fugitives who had secretly crossed the demarcation line arrived in Haute-Vienne, a relatively isolated and predominantly rural department. The Jewish community grew from a few dozen to over 5,000 people, largely organized by Rabbi Deutsch.

In November 1942, the Germans invaded the southern zone, causing panic among the Jewish population in Haute-Vienne. The internment camps at Nexon and Saint-Germain-les-Belles followed the escalating policy of persecution and repression, becoming places of assembly and transit before deportation to concentration and extermination camps.

In Limoges, the OSE (Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants) gathered, from 1942 onward, the youngest children they managed to rescue from internment camps in southern France, such as Gurs or Rivesaltes, in a large house on Rue Eugène Varlin. The Limoges nursery cared for up to 70 children under the age of five—orphans, children in danger, and even children of Resistance fighters engaged in the Maquis. During the first roundups in August 1942, some of the nursery’s children were arrested under the pretext of family reunification.

Aware of the threat of deportation, Gaston Lévy decided to remove the children from the nursery and hide them under false identities with adoptive families in the Indre department. The children thus went underground.

As German anti-Semitic policies hardened and the French state collaborated in organizing roundups, Resistance fighters, religious authorities, teachers, social workers, and ordinary citizens helped protect Jews or organize their escape. Among them was Germaine Ribière, one of the first women in France to be named Righteous Among the Nations in 1967. During the roundups in Haute-Vienne, Creuse, and Indre on 26 August and in September 1942, she provided hiding places for children from OSE/UGIF care centers. On a national scale, she organized the concealment of threatened Jewish children for Témoignage Chrétien and, on a daily basis, managed social services and convoys.