During summer 1941, Beauvallon’ School hosted height Jewish children sent by OSE “Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants,” who came from ‘La Bourboule’ school. La Bourboule school belonged to Rothschild’s foundation that spread around their students for safety. From that moment, Jewish people will be hidden in Dieulefit, through the silence and complicity of the local people. Marguerite Soubeyran, Catherine Kraft and Simone Monnier integrated a resistance network in contact with Great Britain. Starting in 1943, the Jewish colony living in Dieulefit got false identification created by Jeanne Barnier, Mayor’s secretary, who was only 21 years old. Jeanne Barnier created around two thousand set of identification during the occupation. She was also hiding a small Jewish girl, Cecilia Rosenbaum under the name Cecile Roman. In the Beauvallon School, twenty Jewish children were hidden while their parents were staying in the nearby boarding house.

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In the secondary school called La Roseraie, Pol and Madeleine Arcens were hiding teenage Jewish children. The ‘gendarmes’ French military police warned the schools before any raid to give them time to hide.

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August 26, 1942, Marguerite Soubeyran was away from Dieulefit and three Jewish children from her school were taken, Werner Matzdorff, Helmut Mayer and Schwartz. Marguerite Soubeyran and Simone Monnier followed them to Crest and then to Venissieux to obtain their freedom. A committee including Joseph Weil and Charles Lederman from the OSE, two priests Father Glasberg and Chaillet from the Christian Friendship organization and Gilbert Lesage, from the foreign Social Service, worked to save the children from deportation. They falsified the lists and were able to free fifty children. The three Jewish children were freed, and they brought back with them a fourth child to Beauvallon. This event was the beginning of a rescue network for Jewish children in the South Zone under the direction of Georges Garel. The same day more Jewish’s children were taken to Dieulefit, some German and one Italian.

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In January 1944, the Inspector (Working for Vichy's government) for the ‘Commissariat General aux Questions Juives (CGQJ) investigated the Jewish colony in Dieulefit. They were unable to find any, reporting that the mayor and the police ‘gendarmes’ were good and loyal to Vichy. This investigation concluded that they were no Jewish people left in Dieulefit.  

In April 1944 a few eighteen years old’s boys (some Jewish who were in Dieulefit all along) joined the FFI (Interior French Forces). Like Chambon-sur-Lignon (Haute Loire) Dieulefit depicted the silent resistance helping persecuted Jewish people and especially children (57).

Before the war Beauvallon hosted Spanish refugees, German communists or anti-fascists and anti-Nazis, then the first refugees from the north in France, then the first military officers coming from Lyon before leaving for London, intellectuals, Jewish, resistants and those evading STO (obligatory work in Germany) (21). In parallel to its own life as a school, Marguerite Soubeyran, Catherine Krafft and Simone Monnier were leading its underground activities. Through all ordeal, Beauvallon school was resolute in offering the refugee children life as normal as possible providing education, games, music, theater and sports activities. After the war, the three Beauvallon women will be named “righteous among the gentiles” by Yad Vashem.

" Je me suis souvent demandé quel pouvait bien être l'état d'âme de ces adultes le soir à la veillée lorsque les enfants sont endormis. Le désespoir, la peur, la détresse, la fatigue. Ici à Beauvallon les adultes se réunissaient, c'était le moment de faire le point: s'informer en écoutant clandestinement la radio ou en recueillant les récits de ceux qui arrivaient de l'extérieur , échanger ses impressions, partager les émotions du moment, et une fois organisée la survie des 100 personnes sur place, penser aux blessés, aux clandestins de passage, aux maquisards de la montagne, aux personnes à évacuer d'urgence,  mais grâce à la présence de tous les intellectuels et artistes réfugiés à Dieulefit et souvent réunis à Beauvallon la vie était exceptionnellement riche et épanouissante et reste dans le souvenir de ceux qui l'ont vécue une parenthèse de lumière au milieu du noir de la guerre (université libre créée par Emmanuel Mounier en 43). "

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“I often wondered what the state of mind of these adults during the evening vigil could be once the children were asleep. The despair, the fear, the distress, the tiredness. Here, at  Beauvallon, the adults met, it was the time to get updates on the situation: to get news listening covertly to the radio or collecting stories from those coming from outside the village, exchange one’s feelings, share one’s emotions of the moment, and once having organized the survival of hundred people in this location, thinking about those hurts, those underground passing through, the Maquisards (resistance people) from the mountains, the people to urgently evacuate, but thanks to the presence of all those intellectuals and artists who were refugees in Dieulefit and often meeting at Beauvallon, life was exceptionally rich and fulfilling and rest in the memory of those who lived it as an interlude of light among the darkness of war (free university founded by Emmanuel Mounier in 1943).

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Hidayat must have attended some of those vigils as he was the meditation teacher at the Beauvallon school.

November 8, 1942 – The Allies forces landed in French North Africa (Operation Torch) and November 11, 1942, the Germans and Italians occupied the southern Free Zone in France. The Italian army occupied Nice on that day. The German troops occupied Marseilles, Perpignan, and Séte. The Drome department was placed under Italian control until September 1943, and then the German occupied that department as well.

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In November 1942, Fazal was 3-month-old and Inayat almost two years old. By that time, Hidayat and his family were well ensconced in their new refuge in Dieulefit, teaching music at the Lycée Musical and meditation at the Beauvallon School. He was also working in a pottery factory. Hidayat and Helena were certainly well aware and involved with the passive resistance, through the numerous activities, developing all around them in Dieulefit. 

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