When the Vichy regime implemented the anti-Jewish statutes in October 1940, Paul Borel was the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France. He had been elected in 1939, and when the Vichy government, under pressure from the Nazis, began rounding up Jewish citizens for deportation, Borel made a decision that would cost him everything.
He used the Masonic lodge network across France, which had been ordered closed by Vichy, to create an underground escape pipeline for Jewish families. The lodges were transformed into safe houses, supply depots, and hiding places. The network stretched from Paris to Toulouse, from Lyon to Marseille, and operated from 1940 to 1944.
It is estimated that the Masonic network saved approximately 10,000 Jewish lives, making it one of the most successful rescue operations in occupied France. Borel was arrested in March 1942 after a lodge in Lyon was raided by the Gestapo. He was tortured but revealed nothing. He was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp, where he died in February 1945.
In 1946, the Grand Orient of France awarded Borel a posthumous decoration, the highest honor in French Freemasonry. His surviving wife received the ceremony on his behalf. The wooden square and compasses that Borel carried in his pocket when he was arrested now hangs in the Grand Orient headquarters in Paris, engraved with the words of his final letter from prison, I have done nothing other than what any honest man would do. The temple is not made of stone. It is made of men.