Margot V. Reiling, French teacher at St. Paul’s who hid from the Gestapo during World War II, dies

Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun
·5 min read

Margot V. Reiling, who during World War II hid from the Gestapo in the Belgian countryside and later taught French for 30 years at St. Paul’s School for Boys, died of undetermined causes May 3 at The Kensington at Walnut Creek, an assisted living facility, in Walnut Creek, California.

The former longtime Pikesville resident was 96.

Margot Vogel was born to Jewish parents in Cologne, Germany. Her father, Louis Vogel, was a furrier, and her mother, Irene Haas, a homemaker.

In the 1930s, with the rise of Nazism and Jewish persecution in Germany, her family, including her younger brother Henri, moved to Brussels, Belgium, where they rebuilt the family business.

After the Germans invaded Belgium in May 1940, the family went into hiding.

Mrs. Reiling and her mother, who fled to the countryside, were hidden by a Roman Catholic priest and schoolmaster, while her father remained at home hiding in a secret wall compartment. Her brother took refuge at a Catholic boarding school.

Forced to drop out of high school, Mrs. Reiling was given false identity papers by The Underground, as the resistance movement was known, and assumed the name of “Berthe Devos” whose residence was Antwerp, Belgium.

“She had a recurring dream until the end of her life, that she was on a train and a German soldier approached and she couldn’t remember her false name and did not have her papers,” said a son, Peter Reiling of San Jose, California.

For two years until the liberation of Belgium by the Allies, Mrs. Reiling and her mother lived in constant fear of detection and possible execution.

With the end of the war the family reunited and returned to their home in Brussels and resumed their fur business.

In 1949, Mrs. Reiling traveled to Forest Hills, New York, where she visited an uncle, and then briefly returned home to tell her family she was planning to stay in New York.

Because she was fluent in English, French and German, she found a job in New York City with an import/export company.

Through a cousin, she met and fell in love with Arnold A. Reiling, a German-Jewish native who had been sent for his safety by his family to New York City in 1937.

During World War II, he joined the Army and landed at Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and later fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

The couple married in 1951 and soon moved to Pikesville.

In the early 1960s, Mrs. Reiling earned a teaching certificate from Goucher College and became a substitute teacher in Baltimore County public schools.

She was hired in 1965 to teach French at St. Paul’s School in Brooklandville, and eventually became chair of the French Department and the Foreign Language Department.

She was called “Madame Reiling,” by her students, said Charles W. Mitchell, a member of the class of 1973 and former director of alumni engagement at St. Paul’s.

“There were not many female faculty at that time but she always had a smile, and was very kind and approachable,” said Howard Schindler, who was head of the Upper School until his retirement in 2021.

“This was an all boys school and they could get rambunctious and rowdy, but she had such a deft touch of how she approached students. She had between 15 and 20 students,” Mr. Schindler said.

“She was able to make French come alive and more than that, she understood that not all students are on the same level and she taught each of them as individuals,” he said.

Mrs. Reiling never lost her strong French accent, family members said.
“She was very inspirational and very patient with us,” said Dawson Nash, who graduated from St. Paul’s in 1972.

“I thought her hiring, a Jewish woman, which was years ahead of other schools, made St. Paul’s a more diverse and inclusive place,” he said. “She had a love for France that she conveyed to all of her students. I majored in French because of her at Hampden-Sydney College.

“She was a remarkable woman who loved teaching, loved knowledge and loved the boys.”

“Madame knew how to manage classes of adolescent boys while drilling into us the essentials of spoken and written French,” Mr. Mitchell said. “She discussed French history and culture for context that made our studies more engaging.”

Mrs. Reiling was also known for her sense of humor.

“She put up with our pranks. We once parked a motorcycle in her classroom,” Mr. Mitchell said, with a laugh.

Mrs. Reiling established a regular summer exchange program for her students to study in Ferney-Voltaire near the French-Swiss border.

She retired in 1995 and in 2015 she was selected as the school’s first female honorary alumnus, in recognition of her impact on three decades of students.

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However, her wartime experiences largely remained a private matter, even though every other summer she and her family visited Brussels which included “visiting and paying their respects to those that hid them during the war,” her son said.

Mrs. Reiling declined to participate in the USC Shoah Foundation that had been established in 1994 by filmmaker Steven Spielberg whose mission was to document those who survived or witnessed the Holocaust.

“She didn’t want to do it because she felt survivor’s guilt. ‘What’s my story?’ she’d say, ‘I survived.’ She just didn’t want the spotlight,” her son said.

Mrs. Reiling was a member of Har Sinai Congregation in Pikesville, Baltimore County.

In addition to French literature and cinema, she was an avid reader.

After her husband’s death in 2015, a retired petroleum salesman, she moved to Walnut Creek, California.

Mrs. Reiling will be laid to rest at noon Monday at Chevra Ahavas Chesed Cemetery in Randallstown.

She is survived by another son, Michael Reiling, of Lafayette, California; four grandchildren; a nephew; and four nieces.