Jacques BERR

We are a group of 9th grade students at the Les Blés d’Or secondary school in Bailly-Romainvilliers, in the Seine-et-Marne department of France. We wrote this biography as part of the Convoy 77 project, which gives schools from all over Europe the opportunity to write the biographies of people who were deported on the last convoy to leave Drancy camp for Auschwitz on July 31, 1944.

A photograph of Jacques Berr

Jacques Berr was born on November 20, 1923 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, a town on the north coast of France. His middle name was Charles. His parents’ names were Aron, (known as Adrien) Berr, and Germaine Caroline Levy. They were both French. Jacques’ father and uncles had served in the First World War in 1914. His father ran a butcher’s shop in Boulogne-sur-Mer and his mother probably him helped out. They lived at 35 rue de la Lampe, above the butchery, which was founded in 1886.

Jacques had one brother.

He had a distinctive scar on his right cheek, near his eye.

When war broke out in 1939, Jacques was 16 years old. There were 162 Jewish people living in the Boulogne-sur-Mer at the time. When the Germans invaded France, the townspeople were encouraged to flee: the exodus began. Some people left but other decided to stay on, including the Berr family. The Battle of Britain, which took place from May 22 to May 25, 1940, was fought in and around Boulougne, which is one of the main ports in northern France, along with Dunkirk and Calais. What did Jacques and his family do during this time? Did they leave town and go to hide somewhere in the nearby countryside?

The Germans took over the city on May 25, 1944 and began to enforce their own laws. Jacques Berr, as a Jew, was one of the first to experience the effects of the crackdown. One day, Jacques’ father Adrien had had enough of the sign in the window of his butcher’s store, which read “Jüdisches Geschäft”, meaning “Jewish business”, and decided to retaliate by displaying details of he and his brothers’ army service record.

A few months later, on November 21, 1940, Jacques witnessed his father being taken hostage. Then, on December 16, 1940, Jacques and his mother, brother and maternal grandmother were arrested during a roundup, on grounds of their “race”. They were taken to the Enclos de l’Evêché jail. Meanwhile, his father was still being held hostage. During the roundup, which took place on December 16 and 17, a total of 54 Jewish people aged between 10 months and 74 years were captured in Boulogne-sur-Mer. On December 17, they were put on a train. The journey took three days and two nights, and they travelled in freight cars with wooden benches. They were not allowed to get out, and the only food they had was supplied by the Red Cross. They were then interned in Troyes, which is now in the Aube department of eastern France, as of from December 20.

The Jules Ferry school complex in Troyes had already been turned into a barracks for the German army. It was then converted to accommodate “expellees”, all the “undesirables” from the north coast area: these included English, Belgian and Polish people, Jews and Communists. It thus became an internment camp and its fourteen classrooms were used to house families and couples. The people held in the left wing, (the former girls’ school), followed strict rules and were not allowed out, whereas those in the left wing, (the former boys’ school), was more family-oriented. Some people were allowed to walk into town, but in theory could not escape because their identity cards had been confiscated. The French authorities, working under orders from German occupiers, ran the camp. In February 1941, Jacques and his family managed to escape to Lyon, in the Rhone department of France, where a maternal uncle lived at 20 rue Suiphon.

The next trace we found of Jacques was in Lyon, in 1944, by which time he was 19 years old. According to some records, he was a member of the Resistance, but these are not official documents and his father never found any definitive proof of this. He is thought to have continued to use his original identity card. Sadly, however, the Gestapo began to track him down when he refused to join the STO (Service de Travail Obligatoire, or Compulsory Labor Service).

On June 30, 1944, he was arrested by two militiamen from the PPF (Parti Populaire Français, or French popular party: a collaborationist movement involved in hunting down Resistance fighters and Jews; their headquarters in Lyon were on Rue de la République). He later told some fellow deportees, notably Gilbert Weil, that just before he was arrested, he had spotted Miss Cochet, the sister of the tennis champion of the same name and, more importantly, a friend of Jacques’ fiancée. We found no other traces of this fiancée, however: might this have been a cover story for working in the Resistance, or had he really met a fiancée in Lyon? On the post-war paperwork completed by his parents, they stated that he was a bachelor. Why would this woman have reported him? Because he was Jewish? Because he was old enough and should have joined the Compulsory Labor service? Both? In any event, a lot other people were detained that day: Gilbert Weil went on to write that around fifty of them were arrested at the Brotteaux station.

The two militiamen then handed Jacques over to the Gestapo, whose headquarters were at Place Bellecour in Lyon. He was then interned in the Fort Montluc jail in Lyon from June 30 to July 29, 1944. He was badly treated and tortured, and tried to escape by jumping from the 5th floor. In his book La Maison des Otages (The House of the Hostages), André Frossard recounts the conversation he had a few days later, in the nearby Supplices gardens, about what happened:

– “You fell from the 5^th floor?

– I didn’t fall. I jumped out of the window.

– Were you trying to commit suicide?

– I don’t know. I didn’t want to have to go in the bath again. [this was one of the torture methods]

– You only have two bruised ribs?

– I landed on a tarp-covered truck.

– And the Boches recaptured you?

– The truck was at a standstill.”

And so, luck smiled on him again, as the fall could easily have been fatal. After that, his fellow internees said that he was nicknamed “the Parachutist” at the time, and that all the prisoners respected him for it. Some even say that it meant that the Gestapo left them alone, so they were not among the hostages who were executed while they were still in jail.

On July 29, 1944, together with a number of prisoners he had become friendly with, Jacques was transferred to Drancy, north east of Paris. Drancy was notorious for its internment camp, in which Jews, who were regarded as “undesirable”, were detained before they were deported. He arrived there with Gilbert Weil, Isidore Fischer, Roland Flascu and a Mr. Cohn, among others. After the war, they all wrote to Jacques’ parents to confirm that he was there with them. They stayed there for two days.

On July 31, 1944, Jacques was deported to an as yet unknown destination on Convoy 77, a train with a total of 1,306 people on board. He and his friends were loaded into a cattle car together. Isidore Fischer was the only one who did not travel with them, as he was a doctor and was assigned to take care of some sixty children in a different car.

After three days and three nights, in appalling conditions: one bucket for everyone to relieve themselves, only one small opening to allow in air, nothing to eat or drink and no room to sit down properly, they arrived in Auschwitz in the early hours of the morning. The Germans barked orders at them as soon as the train doors were opened.

Jacques and his friends were young and fit, so were selected to be taken into the camp, while the children, mothers, seniors and anyone in poor health were sent straight to the gas chambers.

Conditions within the camp were horrendous. It was overcrowded, rife with disease and the prisoners were assigned to forced labor. Jacques had to take a disinfectant shower and was shorn, shaved all over and tatooed. He was given old rags to wear. He was assigned to block 28, where he did earthmoving work, first in the “Huya” kommando, then in a “death” kommando called the “Bombonkommando”. Mr. Cohn later wrote that this meant they were less badly treated, as they were left alone during the day with a kapo. Jacques was then assigned to the “Union” kommando, while Mr. Cohn was in a different group, in which he was given enough bread and soup to share a little with Jacques. Nevertheless, Jacques’ health deteriorated, and one of his fellow prisoners, Roland Flascu, reported after the war that the last time he saw Jacques was in September 1944, when he was “in a pitiful state and very depressed”. In mid-October 1944, Jacques was sent to the “infirmary” in the “Revier” in block 21, where he had surgery and was treated for an ear infection until January 12, 1945. He was discharged from the infirmary “in good health”. The Russian army was closing in on Auschwitz, which was subsequently liberated on January 27, and as a result Jacques and some other prisoners were evacuated to the Mauthausen camp. They were transported by train in open cars from January 18 to 24, 1945 and arrived in Mauthausen half frozen.

In Mathausen, Jacques must have been assigned to the kitchen, since he was listed as a “Koch” (cook), from January 24 to February 19. He was then transferred again, to the Solvay labor camp, where he worked at the Ebensee site, digging out underground factories.

Mr. Cohn last saw Jacques on February 12, 1945, and again he later testified to his poor health. Sadly, Jacques died on April 26, 1945, at the age of just 22. As for Mr. Cohn, he was lucky enough to be repatriated on May 20, 1945, along with his fellow prisoners Gilbert Weil, Jacques Lubetzki and Roland Flascu.

 

The war ended on May 8, 1945 and in June, Jacques’ mother sent a letter to General de Gaulle, explaining how upset she was by not knowing what had happened to her son and asking him to intervene so that her request would be dealt with promptly. She carried out all the necessary paperwork in an effort to find out what had happened to her son, but received no confirmation until 1947 and 1948.

After the war, Jacques’ father once again took over his butcher’s shop, which is still in business today and trades under the name Label Viande. In a letter sent 8 years after his son’s death, Adrien complained to the Ministry for Deported Persons that they had only passed on information that they had obtained as they went along. We understand that he is still very upset and angry that it took so long to acknowledge that his child had died in the camps.

On the French death register website, we found a Pierre Berr who was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer on December 12, 1921, and who may have been Jacques’ brother. He died on April 4, 1977 at the age of 77. However, the site lists a number of births with the name Berr in Boulogne-sur-Mer, so was this someone from the same family, or just with the same name?

We believe that remembering Jacques Berr and the other victims of the Holocaust is an important way of keeping their memory alive and of paying tribute to their lives that were so tragically cut short. We should learn from history to ensure that such events never happen again. This is what the French concept of “duty to remember” really means.