Charles MENACHE

Finding out about Convoy 77 and two people deported from the 15th district of Paris

In September 2023, the 9th grade students from class 3 at the Apollinaire middle school in Paris began working on the biographies of two people who were deported on Convoy 77, the last large transport of Jews to be deported from the Drancy internment camp in Paris on July 31, 1944. The Convoy 77 non-profit organization assigned us the task of writing the biographies of Charles Ménaché and who were both living in the 15th district of Paris when they were arrested in July 1944. They were taken to Drancy and then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they arrived at the beginning of August. Zelda Menasce survived and returned to France in June 1945, but her cousin Charles died in the spring of 1945, having been transferred between camps several times.

This gave the students the opportunity to explore some French municipal archives (Paris, Bois-Colombes, Sedan and Magné), departmental archives (Ardennes, Deux Sèvres and Hauts de Seine), as well as the French national archives and some foreign ones too (in particular the Bad Arolsen archives, where camp records are held). The students all began writing their own biographies of Zelda Menasce, with the help of a family member, Jean-Marc Alcalay, which was invaluable. In April, they began writing this biography of Charles Ménaché, this time with the help of his great nephew, Frédéric Ménaché.

In May 2024, the students took part in a workshop at the Shoah Memorial in Paris.

Ms. Séné.

 

Charles, Victor Menache or Ménaché 1923-1945

Charles, Victor Menache was born on August 10, 1923 in Sedan in the Ardennes department of France[1]. Born into a Jewish family, his parents were Léon Ménaché (or Menasse), who was born in Cairo in Egypt in 1888 and died in New Caledonia in 1969, and Fortunée Bélifante, who was born in Constantinople in Turkey, in 1895 and died in Sedan in 1963[2]. Léon Ménaché was a brother of Moïse, Zelda’s father. He emigrated to France in 1920 after having lived in Constantinople and Barcelona. The couple got married in Paris in 1922, and then moved to Sedan, in the Ardennes department of France, in 1923. Charles had a younger brother, Albert, who was born on August 20, 1924 and died in 1990 in New Caledonia. The Ménaché family lived in Sedan, where the parents started out as travelling salespeople based at 21 faubourg du Ménil, and then in 1933 bought a building at 47 place de la Halle and opened a fabric store. They had been renting the premises since 1925. Their business was quite well-known, and they showcased their expertise at the Charleville Fair in 1930 (article in L’Ardennais newspaper), highlighting the quality of handmade fabrics. As of 1931, they called the firm “Sedan-Coquet”: “a large selection of high-quality new fabrics, silks and woolens of all kinds”. They continued selling textiles, colorful cotton fabric from Rouen, woolens and hosiery on fairs and markets until 1937[3].

The children, Charles and Albert, became French citizens by naturalization in December 1926, while the parents became French in April 1933, as reported in the French Official Gazette (Journal Officiel).

The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 brought with it the exodus of people from northeastern France, in particular after May 10, 1940. This prompted the Ménaché family to flee the German-occupied area, partly out of fear of reprisals and partly in response to a decision by the French government. They first moved to Les Sables d’Olonne in the Vendée department of France, and then, as of January 1, 1941, to Magné in the Deux-Sèvres department. During their stay in Les Sables d’Olonne, the parents ran a business from November 1939 until 1941 or 1942[4]. Since he was no longer allowed to work due to the anti-Semitic laws, Léon Ménaché closed his store and took his merchandise with him to the Deux-Sèvres, where the family lived in Magné, as did the Hagouel family, also originally from Sedan[5]. In September 1941, the family had to hand over their radio set to the Magné town hall[6].

In June 1942, the Deux Sèvres prefecture notified the family that they had to bring along some textile ration coupons and collect their yellow stars. According to a local military police report, Charles left the family home in Magné on August 22, 1942, his brother having already left on August 6. It seems that the parents also left Magné, having been stripped of their French nationality and since they were wanted by the Germans, who looted their home in March or May 1943. This is revealed by the record of Léon Ménaché’s claim for damages after the war. The parents must have lived in hiding between 1943 and 1945, when they moved back to Sedan, but we do not know where.

In 1943, the French Official Gazette published a notice to the effect that the Ménaché family’s French nationality had been revoked. Since they were Jewish, their property (an apartment and store on Place de la Halle) was confiscated and run by a clerk, M Robert, until the end of the war. During the war, their store in Sedan was used by an optician, M. Prilleux, so the premises were not damaged. Léon Ménaché, his wife and son Albert continued to run the business in Sedan until 1964, when it was sold.

Unlike the rest of his family, Charles Ménaché moved to Paris, where in 1944 he rented a room at 11 bis rue Valentin Hauy in the 15th district. However, we have no record of his whereabouts between 1942 and 1944, although the records show that his brother joined the F.F.L (Forces Françaises Libres, or Free French forces). When asked what became of Charles after he was deported, his father said that he was a student, with burn marks on his back and a slight limp. His nephew, Frédéric Ménaché, explained to us that Charles had polio.

On July 12, 1944, the French police arrested Charles, together with his cousin Zelda Menasce, on the Place de la Bourse in Paris, for either not having had their identity cards stamped with the word “Jew”, or for not wearing the yellow star (sources differ). That same evening, he was taken to the Drancy internment camp, where he was assigned the number 25,105 and placed on stairway 18. He stayed there until July 31, when he was deported to Auschwitz on Convoy 77, with 1309 men, women and children on board. When he arrived, he was selected for forced labor, was tattooed with the number B-3867 and was assigned to road-building work. A total of 291 men were selected to work, with serial numbers B-3673 to B-3963. The records state that he was admitted to the Auschwitz prison hospital on September 21, 1944.

Charles was transferred several times between concentration camps in Germany and Poland. Initially deported to Auschwitz, he was then sent to the Stutthof camp from October 26 to November 17, 1944, where he was assigned camp number 99809, before being transferred to the Natzweiler-Echterdingen camp with the number 43217. After he was repatriated, another deportee, Alexandre Mayer, wrote to Léon saying that he believed Charles had been evacuated on or around January 17, 1945. However, his son told us that there was nothing about this in his father’s notes. Charles was then transferred to the Ohrdruf camp (also known as S III), which was part of the Buchenwald camp some 45 miles from Weimar, where he was registered under the name Menase or Manase and assigned the number 86,368. He stayed there from January 25 through 30, 1945. He was then transferred for the last time, to Bergen-Belsen, on March 13, 1945. A camp work card states that he worked as a baker[7].

Unfortunately, the exact circumstances of his death remain unclear, as there are no death certificates in his name in any of the camps he passed through. He probably died in the spring of 1945, either on one of the long marches that the German army used to both move and exhaust the prisoners, or in the gas chambers. His name is inscribed on the Wall of Names at the Shoah Memorial in Paris. He was first declared to have died on July 31, 1944 in Drancy, but a court judgement dated April 4, 1995[8] changed this to August 5, 1944 in Auschwitz. However, our research in the Bad Arolsen archives shows that he survived until at least March 1945. We e-mailed this information to the French National Office for War Victims and Veterans Affairs in Caen to request that his date and place of death be corrected. We would also like Charles’ name to be inscribed on the memorial to deportation victims from Sedan, which stands in the Jewish section of the town’s cemetery.

 

Drancy arrivals register: APP_CC2-8
Pages from the KL Natzweile prisoner register: Arolsen-Archives-3129754_1.1.29.3

 

Sources

[1] Birth certificate, Sedan town hall.

[2] Naturalization file, Ardennes prefecture.

[3] Ardennes departmental archives (3Q6262, 3Q9102, 3Q9150, 6U2 45, 1348W8, 1342W35, 1620W315; 1W33); Sedan multimedia library.

[4]  Vendée departmental archives, les Sables d’Olonne, 39W254

[5] Les enfants cachés de la Résistance (Hidden children of the Resistance), by J.M. Pouplain, photos p. 160 to 165 and list of children.

[6]  Deux Sèvres departmental archives, which can be viewed at the Shoah Memorial in Paris: 1385W5, SC4893.

[7]  Bad Arolsen archives: Drancy, Auschwitz, Stutthof, Echterdingen (Natzweiler), Buchenwald (Ohrdruf) and Bergen-Belsen camp records. Also records provided by the Convoy 77 team (digitized archives from the Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen.)

[8] French Official Gazette N°116 dated May 18, 1995