Georges KLOTZ

Georges Klotz between the wars
Source: ©Mr. François Heilbronn

Georges Klotz was born at 8 a.m. on August 4, 1868, in the 1st district of Paris. He came from a French Jewish family that originally hailed from Alsace.

Photo of Georges Klotz taken as a souvenir from Deauville in August 1869.
Source : surnostraces.org

Georges Klotz at the age of 75
Source: file on Georges Klotz ©Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the French Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, dossier n°21P 469 395

Birth certificate
Source: Georges Klotz ©Paris archives

His parents were Victor Klotz (1836-1906) and Brunette Victorine Klotz, née Mayer (1846-1936). When Georges was born, Victor was 31 and working as a silk merchant, while Brunette was 21 and did not go out to work. The witnesses who signed the birth certificate were Brunette’s father, Emile Meyer, who was in the perfume business and Victor’s brother, Eugène Klotz, a silk merchant.

Victor Klotz, Georges’ father, in his Mobile Guard uniform during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and in civilian clothes
Source: ©François Heilbronn

Georges’ mother, Brunette Victorine Klotz, née Meyer, in 1924
Source: ©François Heilbronn

Georges, who was the couple’s second child, had an older brother, Lucien Henry (who usually went by the name of Henry) who was born two years earlier, on September 21, 1866.

Georges’ older brother, Lucien Henry (1866-1944), as a child
Source: ©François Heilbronn

Lucien Henry
Source : © geneanet.org

Brunette and her two sons, Henry and Georges
Source : surnostraces.org

Both birth certificates give the family’s address as 4, place des Victoires, in the 1st district of Paris.

Lucien Henry’s birth certificate
Source: Lucien Henry Klotz ©Paris archives

A French success story

Georges was born into an upper-middle class Parisian family. From 1852 to 1883, his father Victor was the manager of the tie-manufacturing firm Klotz jeune, based at 2, place des Victoires[1]. Then, in 1883, he went into partnership with his father-in-law, Emile Meyer. Victor’s father was also a friend and business associate of a famous French perfume maker, Edouard Pinaud, and when he died, Victor took over the Ed. Pinaud perfumery and cosmetics company.

Emile Meyer
Source : geneanet.org

The interior of the Ed. Pinaud perfume factory in 1870
Source : www.ed-pinaud.com

Fortune smiled on Victor. The company chalked up a series of successful fragrances, including Flirt, “the symbol of the luxury and sophistication of the Belle Epoque”[2]. His perfumes and beauty products were purchased by fine folk the world over, as well as to French aristocrats.

Victor bought a prestigious townhouse at 9 rue de Tilsitt, near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (now the Belgian embassy) for a million francs, and in 1897 he opened a new boutique, A la corbeille fleurie, at 18 place Vendôme (now Chanel).

The Pinaud perfume house on place Vendôme in Paris
Source : surnostraces.org

Through the expansion of his perfume and cosmetics business, Victor contributed to France’s influence abroad, not least by promoting the brand at various international exhibitions (the Grand Prix in Paris in 1889, Moscow in 1891, Chicago in 1893, Brussels in 1897 and the Paris Exposition in 1900, during which he organized the perfumery museum). The Ed. Pinaud house also created the famous French hair-grooming product, Brillantine, in 1900.

In recognition of his innovative manufacturing skills and the company’s welfare policy (breast-feeding room for employees with babies, health insurance, etc.), Victor was made a Knight of the French Legion of Honor for his contribution to trade and industry in 1894, and was made an Officer in 1902. He died in February 1906, aged 69, at his home on rue de Tilsitt.

A cultured young man who fought for his country

His army service record[3], dated 1886, reveals that at the age of 20, Georges had brown hair, black eyes, a high forehead, a round nose and mouth and a long face. He was 5’8” tall, which was relatively tall for a man of his generation.

On September 11, 1887, at the age of 21, while working as a salesman, presumably in the family business, he was “enlisted provisionally” for a year and was living with his parents at 51, avenue Montaigne, just off the Champs Elysées in Paris.

We do not know why this fine, cultured young man, who socialized with the likes of Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fézensac, an art critic and well-known character in French aristocratic and intellectual circles (who is said to have been the inspiration for Marcel Proust’s character Baron de Charlus in his famous novel A la recherche du temps perdu), decided to join the army.

Robert de Montesquiou’s dedication to Georges Klotz
Source: ©François Heilbronn

Georges joined the 26th Artillery Regiment. A year later, he was a brigadier. Available for active service as of September 15, 1888, he was transferred to the reserves on November 1, 1890. The following year, in March, he was made a reserve second lieutenant in the 11th Artillery Regiment.

Georges Klotz army service record, service number 1042
Source: Georges Klotz ©Paris archives

He carried out his military service regularly. In 1898, he informed the Army that he was leaving Paris and 9 rue de Tilsitt to travel to America, for an undetermined period of time, but by September 1900, he was back in France for two weeks of army drills. He did the same again in August 1904. In July 1906, he was promoted by decree to the rank of lieutenant in the Railroads and Staging division of the 20th region.

On June 22, 1914, he was promoted to reserve captain. Shortly afterwards, he reported to his regiment in response to the French general mobilization order of August 2. Nobody knew it yet, but the First World War was about to start.

The Pinaud perfume house in New York
Source : surnostraces.org

Henry and Georges help Ed. Pinaud perfumes to expand overseas

Having worked in the company from an early age, Henry and Georges Klotz took over from their father after he died. They took the perfumery to a new level, expanding the business worldwide, including setting up a new perfume house on 5th Avenue in New York in 1908. Perhaps, when Georges went to the United States ten years earlier, it was to seek out potential business contacts?

The brothers’ business was in its heyday. Lucien Henry was named Knight of the French Legion of Honor in 1906 and made an Officer in 1925. Georges was also made a Knight in 1912, as his service record states, and then an Officer[4].

The company’s Paris headquarters moved to 120, avenue des Champs-Élysées, and a new showroom opened at 168, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, both among the most prestigious locations in Paris.

It was a prosperous time, business was booming, but then came the First World War. Both brothers were mobilized and sent to the front, even Henry who, at the age of 46 and as a father of five, could have been exempted.

Georges was 44. He served for the entire duration of the war as an artillery captain and was subsequently awarded the French War Cross 14-18.

After the First World War

When they returned home after the war, the Klotz brothers’ company was facing financial difficulties. Their involvement in the war had prevented them from managing the company, and it was impossible to turn back the clock. The Great Depression of 1929 forced the American subsidiary into bankruptcy in 1931, and the entire group followed in 1935. Then two buildings (Etoile and Vendôme), which had served as collateral for bank loans, were repossessed. Within a few years, the Klotz brothers were totally ruined.

We found no details as to what Georges Klotz did after the Ed. Pinaud firm was sold. He was 67 years old at the time.

The arrest and deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau

In 1944, Georges was living in a rented apartment at 41, boulevard Exelmans, in the 16th district of Paris. He was still single, but had employed a housekeeper, Mrs. Cagnac, for around thirty years.

On July 11, 1944, he was arrested in his apartment and taken straight to Drancy internment camp, north of Paris. When he arrived, he had to hand in 895 francs and was assigned the serial number 25,009.

We do not know how, why or under what circumstances Georges was arrested, but he was not the only family member to be captured around that time. On July 12, the Gestapo arrested his two nieces, Lucienne Klotz (married name Bloche Foucaud) and Denise Klotz, (whose biographies are also available on this website, see links). Their cousins Maurice and Claudine Sergine and André Hayem were also arrested on the 12th. Some other cousins, Fernand and Louise Ochsé had been arrested on July 3rd in a private hospital in Cannes, on the south coast of France, where they had been living in hiding.

Denise Klotz (born 1905, died 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, also a Convoy 77 victim)
Source: Denise Klotz ©Shoah Memorial, Paris

They also came across some friends, as André Jullien Hayem revealed in a letter to his wife, sent from Drancy on July 17: “Met some friends here [illegible] and the Sergine and Klotz families, who arrived the same day as I did, and also Fernand Ochsé [5].”

Lucienne Klotz (born 1899, died 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, also a Convoy 77 victim)
Source: Lucienne Klotz ©Shoah Memorial, Paris

Georges’ brother, Henry, a decorated veteran lieutenant-colonel who was by that time diabetic and disabled, was arrested on July 31, 1944. He was not deported on Convoy 77, however, as the train had already left. He was instead interned in the Rothschild hospice, at 76, rue de Picpus in the 12th district of Paris, which was run by the UGIF and hence under German control. He died there at 5 a.m. on August 18, 1944, the day on which Drancy camp was liberated. The evening before, on the 17th, the Nazi commandant Aloïs Brunner and his henchmen had fled the camp, taking with them 51 men and women including some Jewish resistance fighters and a number of well-known French figures as hostages.

Henry Klotz (1866-1944)
Source: Henry Klotz ©Shoah Memorial, Paris

On July 31, 1944 Georges and the rest of the Klotz family members interned in Drancy were deported on Convoy 77. In total, the Nazis and the French police had arrested nine members of this well-known French family. According to a witness statement, the man behind the family’s arrests had claimed to be a member of the Resistance and was supposedly helping them to have false identity papers produced.

The convoy arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau during the night of August 3–4, 1944.

Georges Klotz’s Drancy search receipt
Source: Georges Klotz ©Shoah Memorial, Paris

The Convoy 77 deportation list
Source: Denise Klotz ©Shoah Memorial, Paris

On his 76th birthday, Georges was most likely sent to the gas chambers and murdered, as were almost all of the other family members. Then again, perhaps he had already died on the journey from Drancy to Auschwitz, unable to survive the stifling heat, with sixty people in the cattle car, very little water and no sanitary facilities?

Denise Klotz, who was 39 years old and Claudine Sergine, who was 44, were both selected to go into the Birkenau concentration camp to work. They both died of typhus in autumn 1944.

After the war

We also discovered that after the war, Georges’ housekeeper of thirty years, Mrs. Cagnac, who was over 70, stayed on in the apartment he rented on boulevard Exelmans. In May 1946, Mr. and Mrs. Fallavier, the owners, wrote a letter to say that they wanted the apartment back, and blamed the family of not settling Georges’ estate sooner.

Georges’ death certificate was not even issued until December 17, 1946.

The post-war letter about Georges Klotz’s apartment
Source: file on Georges Klotz ©Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the French Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, dossier n°21P469 395

Notice that George had been declared dead
Source: Georges Klotz © Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the French Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, dossier n°21P 469 395

The Klotz family headstone in the Montmartre cemetery in Paris

We would like to thank Mr. François Heilbronn[6] for sharing the photos of the Klotz family and telling us the story of this well-known French family, of which he is a member, which was decimated by hatred and anti-Semitism.

Sources:

• Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the French Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, dossier no. 21 P 469 395
• Paris archives, records on Parisian conscripts: Paris city archives, FRAD075RM-D4R1 0553 0490 D (available online).
• Family archives and photos.
• French national archives, Léonore database: file on the French Legion of Honor.
• Victor Klotz: https://www.leonore.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/ui/notice/201276#spotlight
• Lucien Henry Klotz: https://www.leonore.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/ui/notice/201273
• Shoah Memorial, Paris, page on Georges Klotz

Notes & references

[1] File on the French Legion of Honor French national archives, Léonore database, https://www.leonore.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/ui/notice/201276#spotlight.

[2] https://www.ed-pinaud.com/notre-histoire/

[3] Paris city archives, FRAD075RM-D4R1 0553 0490 D

[4] However, this is not included in the French National Archives’ Léonore database.

[5] Letter from André Julien Hayem to his wife (addressed as Bady, a false name perhaps? /Germaine Marie Badiller sent to 24 rue des Marronniers in the 16th district of Paris  (French Defense Historical Service archives in Caen, dossier n°44.711/22P 451 150) ; see also the biography of Lucienne Klotz https://en.convoi77.org/deporte_bio/lucienne-klotz/#_ftnref26

[6] François Heilbronn, Deux étés 44 (Two summers ’44), Paris, Stock, 2023.