Ámparo Otero Pappo


Amparo de Los Remedios Otero Pappo was a Cuban-born milliner who was honored as being among the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for saving French Jews during the Holocaust.
Amparo Otero emigrated with her family from Cuba to France in the late 1920s, settling in Paris to pursue a hatmaking career. A Catholic, she married Jacob Pappo, a Bulgarian Jew, in 1931. They had a son, Charles-Henri, in 1932, and Jacob Pappo died the following year. After World War II began, she relocated with her son to Siran, Cantal. During the war years, Pappo sheltered her husband's family – including her mother-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, nephews and niece – and a teenage Jewish refugee named Liliane Frangi from arrest and potential deportation to the Nazi death camps.
On July 14, 2011, Yad Vashem recognized Amparo Pappo as Righteous Among the Nations, making her the first – and, to date, only – Cuban national to be honored.