Lost & Found

The Finaly boys were back. All France vibrated with the news last week, and the story of the year, which might have been invented by Novelist Graham Greene, shifted into a new chapter with a wail of police sirens.

Last week's action began in the tapestry-hung chamber of the Court of Cassation--the Supreme Court of France--when a black-robed justice read a decree upholding the decision of a lower court: Robert and Gerald Finaly, whose Jewish parents had died in a Nazi concentration camp, should be raised by their Jewish kinsmen rather than by their Roman Catholic foster mother, Antoinette Brun. For weeks before the court decision, France's

Catholic hierarchy had been trying to arrange the boys' return from Spain, where zealous Catholics, including eight French priests and nuns, had conspired to hide them (TIME, March 16). Once the boys were returned, an agreement between the hierarchy and the French rabbinate stipulated, the Finalys' kinsmen would no longer press for the conviction of the priests and nuns under indictment for kidnaping.

Forty-eight hours after the court's decision. Mile. Germaine Ribiere, representing Pierre Cardinal Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyon, crossed into Spain on the last of several recent trips to find the boys. This time they were waiting for her in San Sebastian, in the home of the Spanish provincial governor.

Rushed back through France under motorcycle escort, the boys were taken to the private estate of Jewish Banker Andre Weil near Senlis, where they will be joined by their aunt and legal guardian, Hedwige Rosner of Israel. Until they are 21, Robert, 12, and Gerald, n, will live with their Jewish relatives. Then they may decide what faith they wish to hold. Last week, questioned about their wishes by the Paris press, Robert and Gerald limited themselves to the wish to visit the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.

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