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GC alumna Lois Mary Gunden Clemens '36 will be honored posthumously on Wednesday, Jan. 27 at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. as Righteous Among the Nations in the first such official ceremony held in the United States. President Barack Obamawill speak at the ceremony.

During World War II, in a French Mediterranean town far from her home in Goshen, Ind., Lois served with Mennonite Central Committee U.S. (MCC U.S.) running a children's home. She risked her own safety by helping save the lives of Jewish children during the Holocaust.

Lois is only the fourth American (of more than 24,800 people throughout the world) to be recognized with this prestigious honor. In addition to being a GC graduate, she also served as a French professor at the college from 1939-41 and 1944-58 (before and after her service and imprisonment during World War II). See the Social Justice issue of the journal to read excepts from her diaries, edited by her niece, Mary Jane Gunden.