Abraham LUSZCZANOWSKI, dit Norbert MARTEL pendant la guerre

 

Photo: Copy of 1.1.9.9 / 11191113 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives
From Drancy transit camp to Auschwitz concentration camp, 31.7.1944

OUR INVESTIGATION INTO ABRAHAM LUSZCZANOWSKI

A MYSTERY RIGHT FROM THE START

When our teacher decided to have us retrace Albert-Abraham Luszczanowski’s story, Serge Jacubert from the Convoy 77 project team alerted us to the fact that he was something of an enigma:

“Dear teacher,

Please find attached a folder in which you will find all the records we have relating to this deportee. We also suggest you contact the Shoah Memorial. Please note that we have one file on him under the pseudonym Martel, and another in the name of Suszanowtitz… However, the Shoah Memorial has only recorded the name Martel, and he is thought never to have returned to France – an enigma? (…) “.

First of all, we reviewed the documentation provided by the Convoy 77 non-profit organization.

The first of them documents were some quite recent letters dating from 2011. However, we did not really understand the letters that deported and war veterans’ organizations had sent to various town halls in France. They were trying to identify a man named Norbert Martel, who is believed to have been born in Fraize, in the Vosges department of France, and supposedly died in Auschwitz.

 

38291-SUSZANOWSKY Albert alias MARTEL Norbert
21 P 482 33638291_DAVCC_copyright_11646

We asked the town hall for a copy of the birth certificate. The town secretary searched various names such as Martel, Mertl, Merti, and similar sounding names., but found nothing. The organizations searching for Norbert had done the same: they asked a number town halls across France in places with names similar to Fraize if they had any record of a Norbert Martel born on April 10, 1926.

We then decided to review all of the information already compiled by the various associations and institutions that keep records of Holocaust victims.

Norbert’s name is inscribed on the Wall of Names at the Shoah Memorial in Paris:

The Wall of Names, Shoah Memorial, Paris

On the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center website there is a record of a Norbert Mertl, born in Fraize, France in 1926. He was in France during the war. He was deported on Convoy 77 from Drancy camp in France to the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in Poland on July 31, 1944.  Norbert was murdered during the Holocaust (according to this source).
On the website of Yad Vashem – International Institute for Remembrance

This information is based on a list of deportations from France, in Béate and Serge Klarsfeld’s book Mémorial de la déportation des juifs de France (Memorial to the Jews deported from France), published in Paris in 1978.

Meanwhile, the Déportés de Lyon website states:

Albert SUSZANOWSKY [alias Norbert Martel]. Born on April 10, 1926 in Fraize, France. He lived at 17, rue Eugène Fournière, or 202, rue du 4 Août 1789, in Villeurbanne. He was a telephone and telegraph operator. On the Dachau camp lists, he is listed as a “schreiner”, a carpenter or a “schneider”, a tailor. False papers under the name Norbert Martel. Deported at the age of 18 on Convoy 77 on July 31, 1944 to Auschwitz (serial number 25719). Transferred to Dachau on 04/02/1945. He would appear to have died of exhaustion on January 28, 1945 (Source: Arolsen Archives). He continued to use the alias Norbert Martel in Drancy, Auschwitz and Dachau. As our research progressed, it turned out, some of this information is incorrect.

We already had the records from Dachau in the name of Norbert Martel in the file provided by Convoy 77, which included the same information.

Arolsen Archives, Envelope DACHAU 1.1.6.2 10194444

Copy of 1.1.9.9 / 11191113 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives – From Drancy transit camp to Auschwitz CC 31.7.1944

The records above were provided by the Convoy 77 team.

Among these, a certificate of detention from the city of Duisburg in the name of Albert Luszcanowski stated that he was single and used the name Norbert Martel to “camouflage” himself, and that he was born on January 30, 1924 in Duisburg, Germany.

 Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 99463175 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives – Correspondence file

A group of students worked on a letter from the United Restitution Organization dating from 1956. This also stated that he was registered in the camp under the name Norbert Martel, born January 30, 1924.

Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 99463177 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive,
Arolsen Archives – SUZANOWSKI Albert alias MARTEL Norbert TD 482561

Perhaps he switched identities as a survival strategy? For in France, since December 11, 1942, “a law relating to the addition of the word ‘Jew’ to identity papers issued to French and foreign Jews” stipulated:

We hereby decree:

Article 1. – Any person of Jewish race under the terms of the law of June 2, 1941 is required to report, within one month of the enactment of this law, to the police station at his place of residence or, failing that, to the local military police brigade, in order to have the word “Jew” stamped on the identity card of they are is the holder or on any document in lieu thereof and on their personal food ration card.

Art. 2. – Any infringement of the provisions of Article 1 of this law will be punishable by one month to one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 100 to 10,000 francs, or either of these two penalties, without prejudice to the right of the administrative authority to order the offender be interned.
Any false declaration intended to conceal the fact that a person is of the Jewish race will be punishable by the same penalties.

Abraham thus came up with a false identity for himself: Norbert Martel. Not only did he keep his real occupation and date of birth secret, he also concealed his “status” as a Jew. His false identity card enabled him to avoid having the word “Jew” stamped on it, and thus to move around more easily. He would not have worn a “yellow star”, and his parents and children must have gone into hiding.

This got us thinking: where did all these false identity documents come from, and how were they made, technically speaking? Why did he say that he was born in Fraize, in the Vosges department? Did he just invent this new identity, or was it that of a real person? And why did he choose the Vosges? Maybe it was to disguise his German accent when he was arrested in Lyon? Abraham spoke German and French. Might he have claimed to come from the Vosges, which is near the German border, to explain his German accent? The name he chose for himself sounds French to us, so we think he was trying to mask his Polish background.

Oddly enough, during our research, we came across a Guy Norbert Martel from Fraize, who died there on March 3, 2011, but was born elsewhere and in 1956. Just a coincidence we suppose.

Anyway, Abraham lived in Lyon, in the Rhône department of France. It must have been quite scary to live in such a large city, where people hoped to blend in anonymously, but there was always a risk of being arrested. Despite using a false identity, Abraham was arrested. Alone. His forged identity card didn’t work. Did someone turn him in? Had the Germans found some other means of identifying him? And after his arrest, was he interrogated at Gestapo headquarters? Did they try to make him tell them where his family was living?

Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 99463179 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives – SUZANOWSKI Albert alias MARTEL Norbert TD 482561

It also appears that Abraham worked in various different jobs: carpenter (Schreiner), tailor (Schneider), and salesman (Verkaufer).

In the light of all this new information, we re-examined and checked out some other material from Convoy 77, such as the certificate of incarceration (above), which details where and when Abraham was interned, and cross-referenced it with a record from the International Committee of the Red Cross. We were thus able to produce a tentative chronology:

• January 30, 1924, born in Duisburg, Germany
• La Lande camp from November 1940 to September 1941 (note by Serge Jacubert: in September 41, Abraham was 16, the same age as my uncle Jérôme Skorka. In his book, he describes how he escaped from the La Lande camp, just before the barbed wire was laid, at the end of October 1941). The question of how the Luszczanowski family, or just Abraham, got out of La Lande remains unanswered).
• Transferred from Montluc to Drancy on June 28, 1944
• Deported from Drancy to Auschwitz on July 31, 1944
• KL Auschwitz in August 1944 (number B 3862), left there on January 18/19, 1945
• Gross-Rosen, arrived on January 28, 1945 (number 138,984 )
• KL Dachau – Kommando Ötztal – transferred on April 23, 1945
• Liberated from Dachau on May 1, 1945

Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 99463177, in conformity with ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives

Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 99463168 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives

He was eventually liberated by the American army on May 16 or 17, 1945, at which time he was in the Dachau camp, or more specifically in the Ötztal kommando , to which he had been assigned on April 23, 1945. The International Committee of the Red Cross report states: “He was released by the American army as a prisoner at the Dachau concentration camp”.

Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 99463169 Correspondence file in conformity with ITS Digital Archive,
Arolsen Archives 

1956, Letter from the French Ministry of Veterans Affairs and Victims of War, in response to a request from a liaison officer in Arolsen. Arolsen Archives, Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 99463172

 

OUR INVESTIGATION INTO ABRAHAM LUSZCZANOWSKI: WORKING IN REVERSE ORDER

From Duisburg to Paris

We wanted to find out more about the timeline of events and the places Abraham passed through.

We began at the end: to find out what became of Abraham after he was liberated. While searching for his real name, we came across some death notices on the Internet. We eventually discovered that he had died in Cannes, in the Alpes-Maritimes department of France. We requested a death certificate from the town hall, which confirmed that we had indeed found the right person.

Albert/Abraham/Jakob died in Cannes at the age of 67, on December 26, 1991.

 

We continued our research and found out where he last lived: 31 rue du Commandant Bret in Cannes.

31 rue du Commandant Bret in Cannes – Google Earth

By looking up the address on his death certificate, we discovered that Abraham had died at the Simone Veil Hospital. We contacted the hospital to see if they could provide us with any further information, but unfortunately, they could not. They did however say they would pass on our request to Abraham’s family, whose contact details they had. Regrettably, no one got back to us. We also discovered that this was his last address. Unfortunately, we do not know what happened to Abraham between his compensation claim and when he died. We found out from his death certificate, however, that he was married to a Suzanne Hernandez.

We then wrote to the Duisburg City Archives service to ask if they had any records of Abraham Luszanowsky. Their first reply said that they did indeed have a compensation claim in that name: “The compensation claims were filed by the son of the two above-mentioned persons (Luszanowsky, who previously lived in Duisburg and Anna Luszanowsky, née Schurberg, born August 14, 1901 in Kolomea, died March 29, 1948 in Lyon). He previously used the first name Abraham, but later changed it to Albert, and was living in Paris at the time of the claim. I take it this is the person you are looking for. He was born in 1924 and is listed with other people born up to 1936 in the above-mentioned files, which are still subject to a restriction clause until 2036, in accordance with the North Rhine-Westphalia Archives Act. If you can provide proof that the son has been dead for more than 10 years, I could send you copies of the files pertaining to his fate as a persecuted person”. We therefore sent them Abraham’s death certificate.

Dr Peter Klefisch, who is head of the city’s archives service, also sent us this:

Here is our what we think Abraham must have written in his letter, based on an online translation of the summary of his story:

“My father had a laundry business in Duisburg. We lived in a well-furnished five or six-room apartment (I do not remember exactly how many rooms), in which the laundry was also based. We lived in very comfortable circumstances. My parents were both Jewish, as am I. As a result, my father had to close down his business in June 1933. We emigrated to France and took with us just the bare necessities, which were easy to carry; my parents entrusted the rest to a transport company, but they were never able to recover their belongings. They asked many times, but their requests came to nothing.

My father was not able to open a laundry in France. He found a job as a tailor instead, but he earned so little that I had to start work when I was only 14 years old. In November 1940, my parents and I were interned in the La Lande camp, near Monts, in the Indre et Loire department. The camp was closely guarded and it was strictly forbidden to leave. Nevertheless, in September 1941, we managed to escape. I then went to live in Lyon and used the name Norbert Martel. On June 28, 1944, the Gestapo discovered that I was Jewish, arrested in my assumed name and transferred to me to the Fort de Montluc prison. From there, I was transferred to Drancy camp, near Paris, and from there, on July 31, 1944, I was deported on Convoy 77 to Auschwitz. I was selected to go into the camp to work, and the number B3862 was tattooed on my arm. From there, on January 18, 1945, I was transferred to Dachau camp, from which I was liberated on May 1, 1945. On May 7, 1945, I came back to France. My parents died in 1948.”

This is a translation of the German document:

The applicant is basing his claim for compensation on the persecution of his father, Hersch Lusanowski, who was born on January 10, 1899, in Duisburg and died on October 31, 1948, in Paris. His right to inherit is proven by a joint certificate of inheritance (p. 30). According to this, the deceased was survived by the applicant and his three other children. The declarations of the co-heirs have been submitted in accordance with the provisions of 2040 BOB (pp. 24-29).

I refer also to the application for inheritance submitted by the applicant’s mother, Anna Luszanowski, which I am submitting at the same time as my final report.

After completion of the investigations and the taking of evidence, the application will be submitted with all documents attached, requesting a decision in accordance with Section 195 of the BEG. The following detailed comments are made in this regard:

Jurisdiction

Before his emigration, the persecuted person had his last place of residence in Duisburg (p. 13). Pursuant to Section 105 (2) 3 BEG, this means that my office is responsible for conducting the investigation in this case and that the District President in Düsseldorf is responsible for determining the amount of compensation. This also fulfills the eligibility requirements of Section 4 (1) 1. c) BEG.

Priority

There are no discernible characteristics that would justify priority treatment pursuant to Section 179 (2) BEG.

Grounds for exclusion

of the Jewish star, so that, in my opinion, compensation for damage to liberty through restriction of liberty should be granted at least from that point in time.

Re 2: The claim for damages in professional advancement due to displacement from or restriction in self-employment is unfounded. The applicant’s statement that the deceased had to liquidate his business in June 1933 as a result of the Nazi regime at that time is refuted by the trade tax assessment list from 1931. According to this, the business was already closed on December 1, 1931 (p. 43).

No creditable cash or non-cash benefits pursuant to Section 10 are recorded.

Reasons for denial

1. Apart from the fact that the applicant made incorrect or misleading statements regarding the alleged occupational damage suffered by the deceased, no grounds for denial pursuant to Section 7 (1) BEG are known.

No Gestapo files were found (p. 16).

A copy of this report and the application under the BEG with the resulting deliberations are enclosed.

On behalf of the Doppstadt City Administrator

 

Abraham’s family must therefore have been destitute after he was deported. They were most likely living in hiding and were unable to work legally under the Vichy regime’s decree on the status of Jews and other anti-Semitic legislation. When Abraham was arrested and “identified as a Jew” on June 28, 1944, the family must have found life even more difficult.

We found a lot of information from that time, both on life in general and on the ongoing arrests. On June 28 alone, at around 6:45 a.m., the Militia, on the orders of Paul Touvier, executed seven Jews just outside the cemetery in Rillieux, in the Rhône department, in retaliation for the Resistance having assassinated Philippe Henriot, the Vichy government’s Secretary of State for Information, the previous day. And in Villeurbanne, on the outskirts of Lyon, just after midnight, some German soldiers murdered a cab driver. All month long, Resistance fighters and Jews were arrested, executed and deported. Lyon was liberated on September 3, 1944, but by that time, Abraham was already in Auschwitz.

Abraham’s letter appears to have suggested that the fact that his parents died so soon, just three years after the end of the war, was due to their having had to live in hiding and it having been so difficult to source enough food. We continued our search, hoping to find more information about Abraham’s family. Several sources state that his parents were Hersh Luzsczanowski and Anna Schurberg.

While researching Abraham and his family on the Internet, we came across a non-profit organization called Areshval 37, which focuses on Holocaust history in the Loire Valley region of France. When we looked at their archives, we found several members of the Luzsczanowski family on their list of internees, including Abraham, Sabine, Berta, Herz, Perla Anna, Rosa, and Adolphe Jacob. We therefore contacted them and discovered that a man called Alexandre Luzsczanowski had also been looking for information about his family. He had confirmed by email that several members of his family had died, including his mother, Rosa, and that one of his uncles, Adolphe Jacob, was in fact Abraham.

ABRAHAM’S FAMILY: THEIR INTERNMENT AND ESCAPE

We then emailed the Arolsen archives to request some additional records about Abraham and his parents. His mother, Anna Schurberg, also known as Anna Perla, was born on August 14, 1901 in Kolomea, Galicia, which was then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The town is now called Kolomyia and is in western Ukraine.

We also discovered that Abraham’s father, Hersch, had a namesake who was born in Radomsko, Poland, in 1895 and who was deported to Mauthausen.

Abraham’s father was born in Belchatow, Poland, according to one of his daughters’ birth certificates. We found numerous ther Luszczanowskis from Belchatow who were born in the 1920s and were deported to concentration camps. However, we found very little information about Hersch and Anna Perla.

Records from the Areshval37 organization and other sources confirm that the family fled Duisbourg and moved to Nancy, in France, in 1933; they were then interned in the La Lande camp in Monts in 1940, from which they escaped in 1941.

The camp was in the occupied zone, in the municipality of Monts in the Indre et Loire department, around 10 miles south of Tours. It was not far from the Monts train station, and was used as an internment camp from November 1940 to January 1944. It was originally built in 1939 for workers at the Ripault gunpowder factory but after the armistice in 1940, it was taken over by the Gestapo, who used it as a “reception camp for foreigners”. It was conveniently situated, close to Tours, where the German authorities were based, and to the Paris-Bordeaux train line. It covered an area of 7.5 hectares, and was one of the largest camps in France in terms of population. Between 600 and 700 Jews were held there between late 1940 and September 1942.

Most of the Jews interned in the La Lande camp came from Metz or Nancy. In May 1940, during the German invasion, the French government asked them to leave the east of France and relocate to Bordeaux. Soon after the Vichy regime took power in 1940, it passed a decree that made life even more difficult for the Jews. Twenty days before Marshall Pétain met Hitler at Montoire on October 24, 1940, he set up a network of camps, which proved invaluable to the Nazis as they planned the Final Solution. France’s collaboration with Germany thus began before it was officially announced.

Map from the Touraine departmental archives

 “We, Marshal of France, Leader of the French State,

decree

Article 1. Foreign nationals of the Jewish race may, as of the date on which this law is enacted, be interned in special camps if the prefect of the department in which they reside so decides.

Article 2. The Minister of State for Internal Affairs shall set up a commission responsible for the organization and administration of the camps”

When it first opened, the La Lande camp was mainly used to hold refugees, both French and foreign (mainly Polish, German, Belgian, and English), who had been arrested during roundups in western France. Towards the end of 1940, two convoys transported around 700 people to the camp. Many were Polish Jews who had fled Nancy, Metz, or Strasbourg for the west or south-west of France, such as the Gironde department, and had been arrested there. The camp was used as a transit camp for prisoners who were to be transferred to other camps.

Initially, the internees were still allowed a degree of freedom, but then in August 1941, the camp became a “supervised accommodation center” and barbed wire fencing was erected to prevent people from leaving. In November 1941, security was tightened further: the number of military police guards increased from five to fifteen, and civilian guards were brought in to help. At night, searchlights scanned the fence, but this did not prevent people trying to escape.

Abraham’s family escaped around the same time as the barbed wire fence was installed. Might the guards have helped them? There were five of them, and Rosa was just five years old. Did they decide to escape because they knew they were soon to be transferred elsewhere? The demarcation line was not far from the camp: how did they manage to cross it?

In order to find out more, our teacher asked Claire Podetti from the Convoy 77 team if she could find any information about Rosa, the youngest sister, as we had found her name in the French Defense Historical Service online archives.

We discovered that Rosa had applied to be recognized as having been deported for political reasons in 1961, when she was 25 years old. At the time, she was living at 37 Rue de Nazareth in the 3rd district of Paris.

However, Dr. Peter Klefisch from the Duisburg Archives had sent us an email stating:  “Die Familie (Hersch, Anna, Albert u. dessen Schwestern) lebte nach dem Krieg 1946 in Paris, 37 Rue Notre-Dame-de Nazareth, Paris 3 e; Albert sowie die Schwestern lebten nachgewiesen (1956, 1961) in Paris, 37 Rue Notre-Dame-de Nazareth, Paris 3 e, Adresse 1966, 22 rue Custine , Paris 18 e. Der Todesort von Anna ist zwar Lyon. Letzte Wohnadresse war jedoch Paris.”

This means: “The family (Hersch, Anna, Albert, and his sisters) were living in Paris after the war in 1946, at 37 Rue Notre-Dame-de Nazareth, in the 3rd district. Albert and his sisters were confirmed as living in Paris in 1956 and 1961 at 37 Rue Notre-Dame-de Nazareth, in the 3rd district and in 1966, at 22 rue Custine, in the 18th district. Anna died in Lyon, but her last known address was in Paris.” Abraham also used the address on Rue Custine when he submitted one of his requests to be recognized as having been deported for political reasons.

 

Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 99463174,
Arolsen Archives SUZANOWSKI Albert alias MARTEL Norbert TD 482561

 

37 rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth in the 3rd district of Paris
Photo source, Google Earth

 22 rue de Custine in the 18th district of Paris
Photo source, Google Earth

We learned from the records for Rosa that her family had been arrested by the Gestapo in Bordeaux in October 1940, when she was four years old, and that she had one brother (Abraham) and two sisters.

The term Gestapo (Geheime staatspolizei), although commonly used in France to mean “secret State police,” only actually referred to the State police within the German Reich. In Bordeaux, as in the rest of occupied France, the organization was more accurately called Section IV of the KdS (Kommando der Sicherheitspolizei (SIPO) und des Sicherheitsdienstes (SD)), meaning the regional Security Police and Security Service. It was founded in Bordeaux on August 1, 1940, and SS Commander Herbert Hagenle was assigned as its leader.

We also discovered that before being sent to La Lande, they had already been interned in a “military barracks” from early November to late November 1940. The first decree on the status of Jews was enacted on October 3, and on October 4, the Vichy government declared that Jews could be interned in camps.

We then wrote to the Nancy Municipal Archives service to continue our research on the family. Grégory Thielen emailed us a household record form and explained:

“The documents you wish to consult have not been scanned and are therefore not available online. Searches carried out in sub-series 1 F – Population, and more specifically in the household records, enabled us to trace a Luszczanowski family from Duisburg. The document, from the file kept under reference number 1 F 3207, states that this family moved to 4 Rue Jeannot in Nancy in June 1933 and then moved to 92 Rue de la Hache, also in Nancy, in 1937.

Unfortunately, the household record does not list anyone named Albert; the only son in the family was called Adolphe. However, the inclusion of a girl named Rosa, born in Nancy on January 1, 1936, would seem to suggest that this is the right family.”

We had already come across the name Adolphe on the Areshval37 website (see above), which also said that Adolphe Jacob was in fact Abraham.

Next, we asked the city hall in Nancy for a copy of Rosa’s birth certificate.

She was born at 98 Rue de Strasbourg, which was the address of a former departmental maternity hospital that was later renamed the Adolphe Pinard Maternity Hospital.

The Adolphe Pinard Maternity Hospital. Source: Google Earth

We were thus able to flesh out our chronology:

• January 30, 1924: Abraham was born in Duisburg
• June 1933: The family moved to 4 rue Jeannot in Nancy. Abraham was 9 years old.
• January 1, 1936: Rosa was born in the maternity hospital, 98 rue de Strasbourg, Nancy.
• 1937: The family moved to 92 rue de la Hache in Nancy
• Spring 1940: the exodus from Nancy to Tours, where they probably lived at 48 rue de la Scellerie. Abraham was 16 by this time.
• October 1940: The family was arrested in Bordeaux
• November 1940: They were interned in a military barracks.
• December 4, 1940 to August 5, 1941: They were interned in the La Lande camp
• Between 1941 and 1944, they lived in Lyon.
• June 28, 1944 : Abraham, now 20, was arrested in Lyon, interned in Montluc, transferred to Drancy.
• July 31, 1944: He was deported on Convoy 77: Drancy – Bobigny – Auschwitz.
• August 1944: He was selected to work, entered KL Auschwitz I.
• January 18/19, 1945: He left Auschwitz, set off the death march.
• January 28, 1945: He was in Gross-Rosen.
• April 23, 1945: He was transferred to KL Dachau – Kommando Ötztal.
• May 1, 1945: He was liberated in Dachau by the US army.
• May 16 or 17, 1945: Abraham, now 21, was repatriated to Sarrebourg in France.
• 1946: The family moved to 37 rue Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth in the 3rd district of Paris, where they stayed until at least 1961.
• 1948: Abrahams parents, Hersch and Anna Perla, died. He was 24 years old.
• 1966: The remaining members of the family lived at 2 rue de Custine in the 18th district of Paris.
• Date unknown: Abraham married Suzanne Hernandez.
• Decmeber 27, 1991: Abraham died in Cannes.
• December 22, 2013: Abraham’s sister Breina, widow of Paul Désiré Messaoud Haï Tenim, died at 1 square Got, in the 20th district of Paris.
• September 16, 2022: Abraham’s youngest sister, Rosa, widow of Charley James Attali, died at 1 rue Abel Ferry, in the 20th district of Paris.

The Nancy Municipal Archives service suggested we contact the Meurthe-et-Moselle Archives, where Julie Delmas referred us to the 1936 census. We found this record, dating back to before Rosa was born, which shows that the family had changed their first names:

We then began researching Abraham’s other sisters.

For Sabine, or her other first name, we found nothing. For Bertha (as she was called in the household record from Nancy), Breina, or Breina Rachel, we requested a birth certificate in order to confirm her identity.

After all this, we realized that after his parents died in 1948, Abraham, who had been in the camps at the age of 20, had survived and then had to take care of his three sisters, aged 19, 17, and 12, and that the four of them lived together for a number of years. Two of the sisters stayed in Paris. Abraham moved to Cannes sometime between 1966 and 1991.

WHAT WE KNOW OF ABRAHAM’S TIME IN THE CAMPS

DRANCY

 

All we know about Abraham’s stay in Drancy is that when he first arrived, on July 25, 1944, he had to hand over all his money to the police.

AUSCHWITZ

Source: United States Hoolocaust Memorial Museum

Abraham was interned in Auschwitz I.

AUSCHWITZ I: SERIAL NUMBER B3862

In the “treatment book” from the KL Auschwitz prison infirmary, which covers the period from November 28, 1944, to January 17, 1945, Abraham is listed as prisoner number B 3862.

Copy of 1.1.2.1 / 560149 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives, Laboratory studies of the SS Hygiene Institute in Auschwitz

Another record, dated November 3, 1944, entitled “Laboratory test by the SS Hygiene Institute in Auschwitz,” also refers to Abraham’s serial number B 3862. It describes urine, blood, stool, and sputum sample tests, along with throat swabs. It states that such tests were carried out on prisoners working in potato peeling and kitchen duties, the Kartoffelschälerei kommando. Abraham is listed among the people tested, and there is a circle around his number.

Copy of 1.1.2.1 / 560151 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives, Laboratory studies of the SS Hygiene Institute in Auschwitz

THE KARTOFFELSCHÄLEREI KOMMANDO

Copy of 1.1.2.1 / 129637305 Transport and transfer lists from Concentration Camp Auschwitz in conformity with ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives

We found several testimonies about the Kartoffelschälerei Kommando. We are not sure how long Abraham stayed in this Kommando, but it seems that some prisoners found the working conditions less challenging than those in other units, as it was warmer, the work was less demanding, and there was no shouting or physical abuse. (Er hatte eine leichte Arbeit, in der Kartoffelschälerie wurde weder geschrien noch geschlagen. See Engelmann.)

We also found that this Kommando may have lived in Block 25, based on several online testimonies from deportees who had worked in its geschlossenen Arbeitsbereiche, or closed work area.

The Auschwitz camp kitchens:

Source : fortitude-ww2.fr

The records about Abraham refer mainly to tests for typhus and tuberculosis. Might Abraham have had typhus?

Copy of 1.1.2.1 / 560151 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive,
Arolsen Archives, Laboratory studies of the SS Hygiene Institute in Auschwitz

One of the summary sheets from the Arolsen Archives enabled us to cross-reference Abraham’s medical history.

Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 99463170 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive,
Arolsen Archives Correspondence file

This record refers to “Menschenversuche”, meaning “human experiments”: in other words, experiments on deportees.

When we looked into such experiments, we discovered that the deportees were subjected to numerous trials, including sterilization procedures, many of which were carried out by Joseph Mengele. The experiments also included freezing experiments, the injection of drugs, and tests designed to prove the supposed superiority of the Aryan race. When the Red Army began liberating the camps in January 1945, Mengele fled. He went into hiding and eventually escaped to South America, where he settled in Brazil. He died there in 1979 without ever being tried for his war crimes.

Among the experiments Albert was subjected to, he was injected with substances. What impact did this have on his health? We read some reports from deportees who suffered irreversible physical damage, which may even have shortened their lives.

Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 99463174, Arolsen Archives SUZANOWSKI Albert alias MARTEL Norbert TD 482561

THE DEATH MARCHES

When the Russian army was advancing towards the camps in the east, the Nazis decided to evacuate Auschwitz. Abraham was transferred to the Gross-Rosen camp. He was probably forced to take part in the death marches, given that there is a ten-day gap between when he left Auschwitz and when he arrived at Gross-Rosen (he left around January 18 and arrived around January 28). His prisoner number was then changed from B3862 to 138984, which remained the same throughout his time in Gross-Rosen and Dachau.

We compared these dates with the dates of death marches that have been determined by historians.

 

Arolsen Archives Copy of 1.1.6.1 / 9908058 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives  Transport lists from various concentration camps to the Dachau camp

We then discovered an article on the French website cercleshoah.org that provided an insight into what Abraham may have gone through:

Death marches: the evacuation of the Auschwitz I camp in January 1945

Excerpts from the transcript of Henri Graff’s testimony, recorded for the UDA on October 5, 2005 (Union de Déportés d’Auschwitz or Auschwitz Deportees’ Union)

“On January 17 or 18… we heard: ‘You’re not going to work today. We are evacuating you. We’re evacuating the camp.’ Then they set up tables just inside the main gate. There were lots of cans of food and plenty of bread… I took two loaves of bread and two cans of food. I had a shoulder bag. I don’t even remember where I found it… It was January 1945, it was -25°C [-13°F], I was wearing a thin shirt, a jacket that felt like straw, and horrible clogs on my feet, and we started walking. [This was] the start of what later became known as the “death march.” … We walked sixty kilometers [around 37 miles] through the snow. We walked for three days. Three days and two nights. the thirst set in. Thirst caused by the cold and dry atmosphere. Because, out there, the cold hits you like a stick. It’s not a damp cold [but] a dry cold, you could cut it with a knife… it dries everything out… That bag, those two kilos [over four pounds] of bread and those tins weighed me down. I tried changing shoulders… and I did what everyone else did: I threw everything away. I had nothing to eat. I wasn’t even hungry because I was so thirsty … We picked up snow from the ground, which was dirty… There were two or three thousand people in front of us and they had trampled it. We picked up the snow and sucked it… At first, it was icy cold and it felt good. Thirty seconds later, it stung like crazy. Behind us, we could hear gunshots. Anyone who couldn’t keep up, or fell down, was killed by the SS… And that’s how we arrived at a little train station called Gleiwitz. There, they made us climb into open freight cars. They had been used to transport coal, so the floor was covered in coal dust. It had snowed on top of that… so with the heat from our bodies, the melting snow mixed with coal dust. I can’t begin to describe the state we were in. And then we arrived at Gross-Rosen.”

GROSS-ROSEN

The Gross-Rosen camp:

The Gross-Rosen concentration was built 1940, initially as a satellite camp for the main Sachsenhausen camp. It was originally a forced labor camp used to supply workers for the nearby granite quarries.

He was liberated on February 14, 1945, by the Red Army. It was near Rogoznica, in present-day Poland. Some 125,000 people were interned there, 40,000 of whom died.

Gross-Rosen had a number of Kommandos in satellite camps. When the deportees from Auschwitz arrived in January 1945, the camp became seriously overcrowded.

Over 30,000 prisoners from Gross-Rosen were loaded into open cars and transferred to other camps by train. The journeys took up to ten days, during which many of the prisoners died from exposure, hunger, thirst, and being crammed together with sick people.

Abraham was transferred from Gross-Rosen to Dachau.

ABRAHAM’S TIME IN DACHAU, STILL UNDER THE NAME OF NORBERT MARTEL

Prisoner registration form from Dachau, in conformity with ITS Digital Archive,
Arolsen Archives – Copy of 1.1.6.2 / 10194445

On the Red Cross form, we saw the word “Ötztal” beside the word to Dachau, so we looked up what it meant.

THE KOMMMANDOS

Kommandos were groups of prisoners that lived in a specific concentration camp and were sent outside the camp to work. Dachau had hundreds of sub-camps, also known satellite camps and annexe camps, of which Ötztal was one. It was near a village of the same name in Austria, over a hundred miles from Dachau.  In the Nazi concentration camp system, a satellite camp (from the German: KZ-Außenlager) was a subsidiary detention center (Haftstätten) run by the SS (Schutzstaffel) in Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. The Nazis distinguished between main camps (Stammlager) and satellite camps (Außenlager or Außenkommandos) attached to them. In many cases, the living conditions and chances of survival for prisoners in the outlying camps were even worse than those in the main camps.

According to our research, the Ötztal Kommando worked in a mechanical engineering workshop.

“On Monday, April 23, 1945, an order was given at the Dachau concentration camp to assemble a platoon of prisoners. This ‘Kommando Ötztal’, which was made up of 1,700 to 1,800 Jewish, Soviet and German prisoners, was probably intended to speed up the construction of a large wind tunnel in the Ötztal valley in Tyrol, so that the latest ‘miracle weapon’, the jet aircraft, could tip the balance of the war in the fall of 1945. But many of the 10,000 or so people from Dachau who were herded and driven to Tyrol at the end of April did not even make it to the border alive.”

(source : https://www.podcast.de/episode/503228353/27-april-1945-teil-02-das-kommando-oetztal )

Abraham joined the Kommando on April 23, the exact date referenced several times in the Red Cross record: once again, he survived.

Copy of 1.1.6.1 / 9914909 in conformity with ITS Digital Archive,
Arolsen Archives Transport lists, departures from the Dachau concentration camp

After being shocked by Abraham’s story and, by extension, the history of the Holocaust, we were even more taken aback by the overly bureaucratic responses to the victims’ claims for compensation:

In the Duisburg city hall’s response to Abraham, the mayor denied his request for compensation for the store, stating: “The claimant’s argument that the deceased had to liquidate his business in June 1933 due to the situation under the National Socialist regime at the time is contradicted by the 1931 business tax census list. According to this list, the business ceased trading on December 1, 1931 (p. 43)*.” He also states that no Gestapo records had been found. These records will not be accessible to the public until 2036.

His sister, Rosa, who applied for and was granted the status of political deportee by the French government, was awarded just 32 francs by the French Ministry of Veterans and War Victims.

Abraham was also recognized as having been a political deportee.

This entitled them to:

• a pension for civilian victims of war
• inclusion of the period during which they were deported and/or interned when calculating the length of service required for pension purposes,
• compensation for loss of property
• the French “Deportation and Internment Medal”
• recognition by the National Office for Veterans and War Victims.

How Abraham lived through what happened to him seems to us be almost impossible. What courage he must have had, what will to survive to withstand arrest, internment, medical experiments, death marches, death squads, the death of his parents so soon after he returned home, taking care of his sisters, and then being refused help from a number of government departments.

We were allowed extra hours to work on this project, which enabled us to learn far more than we ever could during our regular history lessons on the Holocaust. We also spent four days in Lyon learning about the experiences and history of the Jews deported with the help the French government. We attended workshops at the Shoah Memorial, watched videos, and took part in the Maison d’Izieu awards ceremony. It was an incredible experience that we would love to follow up on.

Addendum: On January 1, 2025, just as I was about to send off the students’ text for publication on the website and was doing some last-minute research, I was saddened to learn that Abraham’s wife, Suzanne Lusczanowski, née Hernandez, passed away on December 4, 2024, in Mougins. We had been unable to trace her. She was 105 years old. The story behind this research continues to unfold.

Bibliography/websites

• Le camp de la Lande (Indre et Loire), Localisation, intégration dans le système d’extermination nazi, mémorisation (The Lande camp (Indre-et-Loire), its location, place in the Nazi extermination system, and how it is remembered), by Jean-Paul Pinault, pages 141 to 153, in Bibliothèques des Fondations, 2014 (on line)
• DER FOTOGRAF VON AUSCHWITZ, Das Leben des Wilhelm Brasse (THE PHOTOGRAPHER OF AUSCHWITZ, The Life of Wilhelm Brasse), by Reiner Engelmann, 2019, Munich, p. 42
• Faux papiers. Un chapitre ignoré de la Résistance juive en Belgique (Forged identity papers. A little-known chapter in the Jewish Resistance in Belgium
• ), by Ahlrich Meyer, p. 213-269, https://doi.org/10.4000/cmc.492

It is difficult to list all the websites we visited. Those we visited most often were:

• The Shoah Memorial in Paris
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Yad Vashem
• Auschwitz
• Dachau
• La Lande
• AREHSVAL – Association de Recherche et d’Etudes Historiques sur la Shoah en Val de Loire
• Blog by Philippe Ruer, former teacher at the Plan du Loup middle school in Sainte-Foy-les-Lyon

The students who took part in the Convoy 77 project, class of 2023-2024, together with their teacher, would like to thank:

• Serge Jacubert and Claire Podetti for giving them the opportunity to participate in the Convoy 77 project and for their support
• Aline Ambrogini from the Aubanel high school, for organizing workshops at the Shoah Memorial in Paris
• The Areshval non-profit organization
• Le Center for the History of Resistance and Deportation, the Montluc Memorial and la Maison des enfants d’Izieu, for helping to plan the visit to Lyon
• Julie Denand from the Meurthe-et-Moselle departmental archives service
• The DILCRAH in Vaucluse, in particular Richard Andréoni for his support
• Elisabeth, the secretary at the town hall in Fraize, in the Vosges department
• The Simone Veil Hospital in Cannes
• Dr Peter Klefisch from the German State Archives of North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf/ Duisburg /Landesarchiv NRW Abteilung Rheinland Dezernat R 3 – Verwaltungs-, Justiz- und Finanzbehörden
• Frédérique Lapeyre of Mômes Trotteurs, for help with planning the visit to Lyon
• The town halls of the 3rd, 18th and 20th districts of Paris and of Cannes, Fraize, Lyon and Nancy
• Renata Mielczarek, Inspektor ds.Kancelaryjnych, Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Łódź
• Alexandre Veronese and Delphine Bassemon, teachers
• Mr. Khadroui and Mr. Ménard, principals at the Jean Brunet secondary school in Avignon, for their support
• Vanessa Thiele, for here help with translation
• Grégory Thielen, of the Nancy municipal archives service
• Jean-Pierre Strowels