Thérèse Cécile Jeanne Matter (22 December 188729 May 1975) was a co-founder and deputy director of the Ambroise-Paré hospital and nursing school in Lille, France. She was declared Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem on 29 November 1990 for helping to protect Jewish men, women, and children from deportation to Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Formative years Born on 22 December 1887 in Rouen, France, Thérèse Cécile Jeanne Matter was the eldest daughter of Etienne Matter (1859-1934), a Strasbourg-born engineer, and Cécile Besselièvre (1865-1893). Thérèse Matter was educated in Bordeaux at the Protestant Health Center's school of nursing, which was headed by Anna Hamilton (1864-1935). Founding of the Ambroise-Paré hospital and nursing school Following the end of World War I, Matter and three of her fellow nursing school graduates, Alice Bianquis, Eva Durrleman, and Madeleine Rives, joined together to launch a new nursing school and hospital in the north of France. They were assisted by Pastor Henri Nick of Fives-Lille, who recommended three suitable buildings on the Rue Saint-Maur (later Émile Zola) in Lille. After securing the funds to purchase those buildings, Durrleman and Matter opened the Ambroise-Paré hospital and school of nursing, and began offering training to young women on 18 November 1923. As hospital admissions and nursing school enrollments grew, the two co-founders, who had continued to manage the Protestant church-affiliated facilities after the respective marriages of Bianquis and Rives, subsequently hired Léa Ménard and Hélène Lavignotte to assist with administration. On 18 November 1933 the successful nursing program transitioned into a boarding school for nursing students. World War II After the early May 1940 occupation of Luxembourg and Belgium by military forces of Nazi Germany, and the subsequent bombing by German aircraft of a railroad line in Lambersart, a suburb of Lille, where Matter, Durrleman, and their colleagues were still operating the Ambroise-Paré hospital and school of nursing, German army troops laid siege to Lille from 27 May until 1 June. Following an attack on French and British forces stationed west of the Deûle river by three divisions of panzer tanks, the French and British soldiers were ultimately forced to withdraw, leaving roughly one thousand Senegalese soldiers and a small number of other troops to defend Lille. Trying to hold out at multiple spots within and near the city, including the Rue de Solférino, Rue Nationale, Haute-Deûle, and Citadel of Lille, the resisters were