Dr. Michel Reynders was a pathologist, a rescuer of Jews during World War II, an actor, a man fluent in seven languages and a continual learner and teacher.
Reynders, who died Tuesday, the day before his 74th birthday, was also a wine expert. And he “had any book you wanted to read and was one of the most intelligent people I ever knew,” said his former partner, Dr. John Denst, also a pathologist.
“His medical judgment was superb,” Denst said.
Reynders and his wife, Colette Reyn ders, acted at the French Alliance Theatre Company. Michel Reynders had done theater reviews to earn money in college, she said.
Reynders “was totally dependable and was devoted to his patients,” said Dr. Bill Reichquam, who was Reynder’s boss in the pathology lab at Veterans Affairs Medical Center. “He was a real gentleman.”
The Belgian-born Reynders loved organization. He planned trips for his family and for friends, left a file for his family with detailed funeral plans and wrote everyone in his family a letter days before he died. Another letter went to the Italian woman who had been his nanny as a child.
“He was constantly moving and learning,” said his son Dominique Reynders of Brussels, Belgium. “At the symphony, he’d draw caricatures of the conductor and the players on the back of the program.”
Michel Reynders asked that there be no “usual church hymns” at his service. He left a recorded cassette tape to be played. It included works by Mozart and Bach and a chorus from a Verdi opera called the “Chorus of the Jewish Slaves,” which he wanted played because his uncle had helped rescue 320 Jews from the Nazis in Belgium.
Michel Reynders was a young teen in Brussels when the Nazis invaded. His priest-uncle, the Rev. Bruno Reynders, became involved in rescuing Jews.
Sometimes Bruno Reynders would have his nephew accompany a Jewish boy across town on the bus, feeling the Jewish boy would be safe because he was riding with a blond boy.
“The Nazis had a manual about their stereotype of what a Jew looked like,” Michel Reynders said in a Denver Post interview several years ago.
The children’s parents had often already been taken to death camps.
Bruno Reynders, who died in 1981, tried not to involve his family too much, for safety reasons, but sometimes he would hide people on the “underground railway” in Michel’s house briefly, and Michel Reynders’ father, Joseph Reynders, a doctor, would treat those who needed medical attention.
There were times when Nazi officials would be pounding on the front door as the priest and the Jews he was hiding were leaping out the back, Reynders told The Post. The children were hidden in monasteries, churches, convents and schools until they could be safely taken to other European countries.
Underground workers, such as Bruno Reynders, stole blank ID cards for the children and got relatives to feed them and wash and iron clothes for them.
Bruno Reynders was honored by Israel for his rescue efforts.
Michel Reynders was interviewed by the Shoah Visual History Foundation, started by movie director Steven Spielberg, which is making tapes of survivors and rescuers. Reynders also appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to discuss the rescues.
Michel A. Reynders was born June 29, 1931, in Brussels. After high school, he attended Catholic University of Louvain, where he earned his medical degree. He met Colette De Peet there, and they married Jan. 7, 1961. They immigrated to Denver, where he had a second residency at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
She has taught French at Graland Country Day School, Cherry Creek Schools and University College at the University of Denver.
He practiced medicine at Porter Hospital and taught at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and the VA hospital.
He was vice consul of Belgium for cultural affairs in Colorado. He also edited the French Alliance paper here, Le Canard, and put together compendiums of music for radio station KVOD.
In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by son Jean Noel Reyn ders of Denver and four grandsons.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
