RelatioNet SZ BE 32 PA FR

Interviewer:

Full Names: Bar Melinger & Tal Ari
Email: arital1@hotmail.com
Address: Kfar Saba, Israel


Survivor:

Code: RelatioNet SZ BE 32 PA FR
Family Name: SZPIC First Name: BERNARD
Father Name: Joseph
Mother Name: Mother Name
Birth Date: 1/01/1932
Town In Holocaust: Paris Country In Holocaust: France

Interview:

When the Nazi’s occupied France during the Second World War, Bernard was just a young boy at Junior School. There was great anti-Semitism in the country and the Jews were the people most hated. All Jews, including Bernard and his friends, had to wear a big patch with the Star of David on their arms to identify them as Jews. At this time, many Jews were killed or just disappeared and taken to concentration camps.

Bernard lived in terrible fear. One day when Bernard came home from school his father was not at home. The German’s had arrested him and taken him away. He never saw his father again. In 1942 the Nazi's started arresting people every day and many of Bernard’s family and friends were also taken by the Germans and never seen again. Bernard’s mother knows that she had to do something quickly in order to save Bernard and his brothers. She knew that if they did not escape they would soon also be arrested and taken to the camps or killed. Bernard’s mother took he children to a Christian family who she knew and asked them to look after Bernard and his younger brother. Bernard was only 11 years old when he realized that he and his brother were still in danger when he saw some German police come to the school where he and his brother were studying. The two boys ran away and escaped to Paris. At his young age Bernard was now alone and had to take responsibility for his younger brother.

In Paris the boys lived with a friend of his mother. They burned their patches and changed their names. Bernard went to school and lived as a Christian child. However, one day he noticed a few German police cars driving up to the school. His teacher, who knew that he was Jewish, told him to run away. He took his brother and ran back home to where his mother was living with her sister. However, they soon understood that it was not safe to be at home and Bernard once again ran away with his brother to a small town near Paris.

In this town they, together with a few more Jewish children, lived with a priest who was in contact an underground organization that helped Jewish refugees cross the border in order to get out of France. After a while, Bernard and his brother, with the help of this organization, crossed the border. He was finally re-united with his mother. Although Bernard and his family were across the border, they were still in danger and had to hide from the Germans. This situation continued until 1944 when the war was over.

In 1947 Bernard and his family decided to move to Argentina. There they lived quietly and built their lives as best as they could after such a terrible experience. Bernard eventually got married and in 1963, together with his wife and children, immigrated to Israel.

Town:Jews in Paris - Before, during and after the holocaust

Before

In the early 1900, France faced an increase in Jewish immigration from all over Europe and the Middle East. From the early 1880’s to the beginning of World War I more than than 25,000 Jews immigrated to France, though for many of them, this was not the final destination, but rather a temporary location.

Jewish artists in Paris, such as Modigliani, Soutine, Kisling, Pisarro and Chagall, prospered in the beginning of the century.

As the First World War approached, there were anti-Semitic campaigns because of the Nazis' need for a strong, unified front. That caused a diminutive Jewish immigration and many Jews left France.

During the somewhat calm years, between the first and the Second World War, the Jewish immigration to France increased once again. The pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and Poland and the new laws in the United States, which prohibited free immigration, forced many Jews to leave their belongings behind and immigrate. Many Jews also immigrated from North Africa, Turkey and Greece during those years.


During

Paris fell on June 14th, about a month after France was invaded by the Germans on May 10th. Approximately 300 thousand Jews lived in France before the invasion.

Between 1940 and 1942 a number of Anti-Jewish measures and actions were enforced including a detailed characterization of “Who is a Jew?”. Jewish radio stations were closed, Jewish members of the resistance movement were either executed or deported, Jews were forbidden to change their domicile and access public areas and they were forced to wear a yellow badge shaped as a six-pointed star (a Jewish symbol of the star of David).

In April 1941 the French government, also known as a Vichy government, founded a government ministry for Jewish matters (Commissariat General aux Questions Juives), whose goal was to help the German authorities to make sure the businesses in the occupied area were in Aryan hands, hiring Aryans alone. During that time the French police was responsible for the deportation of the Non-French Jews, while the Gestapo (the official secret police of Nazi Germany) deported the French Jews.

The deportation of Jews to concentration camps in both Poland and Germany began on March 1942, when 1112 Jews were deported. A number of infamous round-ups involving the arrest of Jews occurred during this year. Up to July 1944, about 76 thousand Jews were deported via French transition camps to concentration camps in Europe. While some of these deportees had a French nationality, about 53 thousand remained with no nationality at all.

The Jews in the French transit camps such as Gurs and Drancy suffered from a lack of nutrition and bad sanitation. The Camps were very crowded, some, for instance Drancy transit camp, held 10 times more people than they were designed to populate. More than 3,000 Jews died in these internment camps.

An estimated 25 percent of the Jews in France before the war, died in the holocaust.

After

In 1945 there were 180,000 Jews living in France, and by 1970 this number had tripled. Due to the decline of the French empire, a large number of Jews immigrated to France from North Africa. After the Six Day War in Israel, 16 thousand Jews immigrated from Morocco and Tunisia; therefore, by 1968 there was a majority of Sepharadic Jews in France.

The main problems of the Jews in France are the anti-Semitism and the assimilation. Following the Six Day War, the French government under the residency of Charles de Gaulle, was anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian. In May 1968 an anti-Israel propaganda was published by the New Left and supporters of Palestinian terrorism. A number of physical confrontations occurred between Jews and Arabs in Paris.

During the 1970’s a large number of Jewish monuments and cemeteries were vandalized and corrupted for anti-Semitic and racist reasons. On October 3rd, 1980, a bomb exploded near a synagogue in Paris, killing four people. Incidents like these continued appearing through the 80’s and the 90’s, but the most of the perpetrators were not sentenced or punished.

Today, there are more than 600 thousand Jews living in France, more than half of them in Paris.