Joseph Irving DENEMARK
(1918, Paris – 1944, Auschwitz)

Joseph Irving Denemark was born on October 8, 1918 at 35, rue de Maubeuge in the 9th district of Paris, which was the home of his parents, Erakhmiel (known as Raymond) Denemark, and Cécile Denemark née Rosenfeld[1].

At the time, the armistice had not yet been signed and his father (who had been naturalized as a French citizen and begun using the name Raymond) was serving in the French army as a military nurse and dentist.

He was named Joseph after his maternal uncle, who was killed in action in 1916. Ber Rosenfeld, his maternal grandfather, declared his birth at the local town hall, as Raymond was still in the army.

It is unclear why they chose the middle name Irving, which is neither widely used in France nor a traditional Jewish name[2]. However, to mark his coming of age in line with the Jewish religion, Joseph had his bar mitzvah on Saturday, October 24, 1931, at the Temple de la Victoire in Paris[3].

Joseph grew up in a relatively well-to-do family with roots in “Russia” (since the borders have shifted significantly over the years, we decided to use this umbrella term for the area that now encompasses Riga in Latvia) and in Poland (Augùstow was in Poland when Erakhmiel/Raymond was born). His maternal grandfather was a jeweler who emigrated to France with his wife and daughter, Sarah-Léa, before Joseph’s mother Cécile was born. Joseph never knew his paternal grandfather, who died before he was born, nor his grandmother, who stayed behind in his father’s hometown.

He had three cousins on his mother’s side, but they were older than him and lived out in the suburbs.

Joseph was five years old when his younger sister, Jacqueline Nadia, was born on March 20 1923. She too was born at home[4]. He also had family in America, to which one of his uncles and possibly some other member of the Denemark family had emigrated. He may well have met his uncle when he came to France to try to persuade his parents to emigrate to the United States[5].

What about his schooling? He is listed in the 1936 census of Paris as a student. He must have been in high school at the time. But which one, and what did he do after that? Did he do his national service? Was he called up in September 1939? This chapter of his life has yet to be fully explored.

The war, arrest and deportation

Who knows why Raymond refused to leave France in 1938, when the warning signs were clear for the Jews and war was on the horizon? Was it because his daughter Jacqueline was studying for her baccalaureate exams? Was it out of patriotism and faith in French democracy? Did Joseph, who was old enough to make his own decisions, willingly heed his father’s advice?

In any event, Joseph managed to stay under the Nazi radar for most of the war. But just as Allied victory was almost inevitable, the Americans were fast approaching Paris, the railroads were bombed and troop transport was a priority, the Nazis decided to put all their energy into deporting as many Jews and Resistance fighters as they could get their hands on. They located them by referring to the Tulard file, (a list made at the time of the census of Jews), because they were already in jail or, in the case of the children staying in homes run by the UGIF (Union Générale des Israélites de France, or General Union of French Jews), because the “Jewish Affairs” department had put them on “blocked” list.

The Denemark family members were among the last “free” victims of this hurried, anti-Semitic rampage.

On July 27, 1944, when the French police came to arrest them[6], Joseph was still living in the family home. He was 26 years old.

After being held for a short time at the Paris Police Headquarters depot, they were taken to Drancy internment camp, where preparations were already underway for the last major transport to Auschwitz. A few days earlier, SS officer Aloïs Bruner, the commandant of the camp, had raided all the UGIF children’s homes, had all the elderly and sick Jews brought in from the hospitals and hospices, and had emptied the prisons of Jewish resistance fighters.

It was with all these people, 1306 in all, in groups of around 60, that Joseph was crammed into a cattle car for the long, arduous journey. There was hardly any drinking water and not even the most basic sanitation.

The train pulled up alongside the ramp at Auschwitz in the middle of the night. The selection was carried out immediately: the young, able-bodied people were chosen to go into the camp to work and everyone else, including the children, was sent straight to the gas chambers. Why was Joseph, who was in his late twenties, not sent into the camp with the other young men?

On September 27, 1946, his grandmother Anna Rosenfeld submitted a missing person’s file in order to have his civil status updated. The form referred to missing deportees as “non-returned”, but Anna Rosenfeld used the term “racial deportee” to describe the reason for his disappearance. This was later replaced by the somewhat euphemistic title “political deportee”.

Anna Rosenfeld died in 1951, so was unable to compete the formalities required to have Joseph granted “political deportee” status, nor to request that he be declared to have “Died for France” or “Died during deportation”, both of which the French authorities introduced at a later date.

Notes & references

[1] City of Paris civil registers.

[2] Unless Raymond and Cécile had heard, before it became widely known, the music of Israel Beilin, better known as Irving Berlin.

[3] L’Univers israélite (Jewish Universe), October 23, 1931, p. 221.

[4] City of Paris civil registers.

[5] According to the uncle’s great-granddaughter, Nicole Wynn.

[6] From the file held by the Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the French Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, dossier ref. 21 P 442 640