Albert Bedane risked being sent to a concentration camp

Albert Bedane is the only British subject, acting on British soil, to be awarded the Righteous Among Nations honour from Israel.

Jersey Bailiff Sir Philip Bailhache unveiled a cabinet displaying the certificate and medal awarded to Mr Bedane who hid Mary Richardson, a Dutch jew, from 1943 until the end of the Occupation in 1945, in the cellar of his Roseville Street home.

The event was held on Holocaust Memorial Day, to remember the victims of Nazi concentration camps, including the Channel Island of Alderney.

I thought that if I was going to be killed I would rather be killed for a sheep than a lamb anyway Albert Bedane

Mr Bedane's grandchildren, Duncan Macpherson and Susan Grace, attended the ceremony at the Occupation Tapestry Gallery in St Helier.

Masseur Mr Bedane also provided a hiding place for a number of other people, including a French prisoner of war, and a number of Russian forced workers.

Mr Bedane, who died in Jersey in 1980, faced deportation and would probably have been sent to a concentration camp had he been discovered.

Secret cellar

Another islander, Louisa Gould, was deported for sheltering a forced worker who had escaped. She died at the Ravensbruck concentration camp.

Mr Bedane once explained why he had risked his life: "I had a few nightmares occasionally but I thought that if I was going to be killed I would rather be killed for a sheep than a lamb anyway."

Mrs Richardson, who had registered herself with the German occupiers in accordance with the anti-Jewish laws, escaped after she was told she was going to be deported.

She fled to Mr Bedane's clinic, which had a secret cellar, where she hid initially before moving to an upper room in Mr Bedane's house.

He told the Jersey Evening Post in 1970 that while in hiding, Mrs Richardson changed her hairstyle and wore dark glasses, and would sometimes sit out in the garden.

She escaped detection by going back to the cellar whenever the house was searched by the Germans.