Marcelle KORSSIA

Two classes, a 10th grade class of German-speaking students and the 11th grade class specializing in History-Geography-Geopolitics-Political Sciences (HGGSP), both from the Marcel Pagnol High School in Marseille, worked together on this project to address the following question: What was it like to be a woman or a child during the extermination campaign in Europe?

The students carried out their investigation using the archived records about six deportees: three women Margarete ALT, Anna TUGENDHAT and Henriette COVO, two children, Marcelle KORSSIA and Suzanne KOSLEWICZ and one teenager, Marcel KRAJZELMAN. Each of the classes contributed its own skills: the 10th grade class, with the German-speaking students, translated the archives, carried out part of the historical research and put it into context, while the 11th grade class of HGGSP students acted as their tutors during the investigation and helped them develop a critical approach to the sources and the historical silences in each deportee’s life story.

They split into groups according to the investigations to be carried out and then pooled their work. All the projects are related to each other and are organized in similar format. For example, for Marcelle Korssia:

1. Investigation: Who was Marcelle Korssia?
2. The historical silences in Marcelle’s story.
3. The exhibition in the CDI (Documentation and Information Center, similar to a school library): pooling and presentation of the students’ work on all six projects, school outings, testimonies, visual aids, and sources vs the gaps in the story.
4. Students’ observations: Why is it important to work on the history of women, children and teenagers? How does your work help to combat prejudice?

I) Investigation: Who was Marcelle Korssia?

1) At the beginning, how many records about Marcelle did you have? What did you learn about your deportee from these records? What hypotheses did you put forward?

At the start, we had a total of 18 pages of records about Marcelle in the Veterans and Victims of War dossier provided by the Convoy 77 non-profit organization, www.convoi77.org.

From these archives we discovered several valuable pieces of information:

First of all, it was information related to her identity. Her name was Marcelle Camille Korssia. She was born on August 16, 1936 in Oran, Algeria.

Subsequently, we were able to gather some information about her family. Her mother was Tomar Korssia¹ and her father is Yaya Korssia, a cabinetmaker. They lived at 55, rue du Général Céres in Oran, Algeria. She also had some sisters²: Alice Simone, born on January 9, 1935 in Oran, Marcelle Camille, born on August 15, 1936 in Oran, Claude Sauveur, born on April 20, 1939 in Marseille, France and Elise Renée, born on December 14, 1940 also in Marseille.

The Korssia family lived in Marseille³ , at 16, quai du Marécheal Pétain, an address on the old port which no longer exists nowadays, and then at La Destrousse. Marcelle’s mother was reportedly arrested on May 4, 1944 and transferred to the Baumettes prison, but this chapter of the Korssia family’s life is somewhat vague. Two witnesses reported that Marcelle’s mother was arrested by the Roquevaire brigade in the Bouches du Rhône. The first was Paul Rebuffat, who was the mayor of La Destrousse at the time of Tamar Korssia’s arrest, and the second was Ginette Martin⁴ the then secretary at the town hall. The mayor explained that they were good people but he did not remember that their arrests had taken place in La Destrousse, while Ms Martin knew the family well and also that they had sought refuge near the old port of Marseille. She explained that the Gestapo had come to La Destrousse in May 1944 to arrest the five Korssia children. She said that Tamar was not at home that day, that she must have been arrested in Marseille, and that she never saw her again. She said that she could not give any further information about the Gestapo officer, who had gone straight to the family home.

 

 

An application for the status of political deportee was submitted to the Ministry of Veterans and Victims of War by Paulette Korssia⁵. Might she have been a survivor? She is not listed with her other siblings in the deportation records in a file that includes Claude Sauveur, Gabrielle Esther, Elise Renée, Alice Simone, who were arrested at La Destrousse and sent to the Baumettes prison in Marseille and then to an unknown location. A certificate dated 1953 states that they had not been repatriated by then⁶. In the application, Paulette refers to her sister. Another document, which confirms that Marcelle was granted the status of political deportee⁷, says that Paulette was her sister and that she was then living at 47, cours Pierre Puget in Marseille, under the guardianship of the Veterans and Victims of War Office.

2) What did you learn by contacting the archives services and/or other people?

Through our online research, we discovered that after she was arrested, Marcelle was deported at the age of 8, together with her mother and her four sisters, Gabrielle, who was 14, Simone, 9, Claude, 5 and Elise, 3, on Convoy 77⁸ on July 31, 1944. In a family photograph on the Shoah Memorial website, she is the first little girl on the right⁹.

The name of her mother, Tamar, is spelled differently on her Drancy search record in logbook number 136, receipt number 4430: it is spelled Korcia rather than Korssia. Her address in Marseille is written correctly. She had 1107 francs in notes and coins on her when she arrived in Drancy.

When we contacted the Departmental archives service in Marseille, we received some more information about Marcelle¹⁰. A political deportee card was issued for her¹¹. A record provided by the Convoy 77 association refers to this with the number 21130924¹².

We also wanted to know more about where she lived in Marseille, so we looked on Google Earth. There is a restaurant there now. We contacted the proprietors but to no avail.

Marcelle’s father, who was called Jaya rather than Yaya, was arrested and deported to Sobibor on Convoy 52 on March 23, 1943¹³.

When we contacted other archives departments, we did not find any additional information.

However, we contacted Ms. Denise Toros-Marter, a former deportee, by telephone¹⁴. She is a woman who is committed to the commemoration of the deportees from the Second World War and the Shoah. She is the president of a non-profit group representing friends and family of Auschwitz deportees in the Marseille and Provence area. We called her to ask if she had any information about Marcelle, but she did not. She told us only that she had known a Korssia in the past but could not go into detail. Nevertheless, out of curiosity we decided to read Ms. Toros-Marter’s biography. As a result of our research, we discovered some interesting information. Ms. Toros-Marter has some things in common with Marcelle: she was deported on Convoy 74 after having been imprisoned at the Baumettes prison in Marseille. She was also handed over to the Gestapo following a tip-off and was ultimately deported to Auschwitz.

 

 

According to the 11th graders’ research, Paulette Korssia is still alive¹⁵. She was being kept in hiding by her adult sister Fortune when her family was arrested. She then stayed in an orphanage and was adopted by an American family after the war and thus became Paulette Wolfe. She had some memories of her stay in an orphanage and of being adopted, but none of her family in Marseille, not even her original family name. She once found a photo of herself with a “K” on the back, but the rest of her name had been erased. It wasn’t until she was 20 years old that Paulette discovered she had biological siblings still living in France. Her father took her to the French Embassy in New York, where she found out that her surname was Korssia and that she was born in Marseille.

She later discovered that her sister Fortune had tried in vain to find her, finally giving up the search in 1969. In 1971, Paulette, who was then 28 years old, decided to retrace her journey and search for other Korssia family members still in France, where she found her sister Fortune. Paulette is now married and her surname is Dorflauter. She is still alive today and lives in Livingston, Montana, USA.

Marcelle is commemorated in an exhibition at the Camp des Milles in Aix-en-Provence, which we visited during our school trip on March 1, 2022.

3) Were there any lulls during the research? Why? Did you anticipate that you would be able to write such a detailed biography when you began your research?

During our research, there were a few lulls and dead-ends, such as when we tried to find information about Marcelle in Marseille. We had difficulty in obtaining relevant and coherent information about her family.

4) In what way does your work contribute to the remembrance of Marcelle?

Our work contributes to the remembrance of our deportee through all the information gathered in order to preserve the memory of the Korssia family.

 

II) The historical silences in Marcelle’s story:

1) What are “historical silences”? And were there any such silences in Marcelle’s story?

Some victims were terribly traumatized and wanted to forget, to erase this terrible period from their memories. This is what happened to Jurek Becker, who was found in the Sachsenhausen camp by his father, an Auschwitz survivor. His father wanted to completely suppress this period of their lives. The names were changed and so were their dates of birth. Jurek knew nothing about his earlier life and wanted to know more about his identity. His childhood felt like a black hole in his head. He went to Poland to interview survivors in order to document his life. His father, André Bessière, forbade him to talk about the issue, simply saying “it’s over”. His mother spoke very little to him about it because she was worried about the after-effects it might have on the child; the very child who was not able to express what had happened to him or the trauma he had suffered.

There are several spellings of the family name, Korssia, Korcia and Korsia. This can be problematic when researching. Also, the family was of Algerian descent, so that too makes it more difficult to find records.

2) What does it mean to be a child? And a teenager?

For the question about children and teenagers, well, they were sent into the concentration camp system. Some teenagers went into the concentration camp, while children were sent straight to the extermination center. Teenagers over 16 and up to 18 years of age were not exterminated because they could work and were useful, whereas children could not work, so they were murdered in the gas chambers and then incinerated. Being a child or a teenager at that time meant constant torture and trauma until they died.

3) What particular types of violence did Marcelle experience? And children and teenagers?

Marcelle was surely afraid of being arrested alone without her mother, although she had her sisters around her. She was exiled for the first time when she left Algeria for Marseille and lived in hiding at La Destrousse, which could have been traumatic. Marcelle died shortly after being deported.

Other forms of violence that children experience were:

The children had to lie about their age in order to appear older, so that they would not be taken to the extermination center. The girls between 16 and 18 years old were sterilized with X-rays. They came back in a terrible state, with vomiting, abdominal pain, burns and physical and psychological disorders. The underage girls were treated like some kind of object or guinea pig by being injected with vaccines, drugs and strains of tetanus, streptococcus, staphylococcus in an attempt to find out if the Nazis’ concoctions could be used on the war wounded. Before the British liberated the camp, the SS disposed of all the children, doctors, nurses and guinea pigs so as to leave no material evidence. Newborn babies were drowned or strangled in front of their own mothers.

Children and adolescents who survived the concentration camps came back seriously damaged, both emotionally and physically. They came back with typical disorders, not only known conditions, but also skeletal problems. Marcel Petit, in his testimony, described how he suffered from dysentery and tuberculosis. These children had no sanitary facilities and were constantly exposed to the cold and the sun. They also suffered from serious mental problems, such as fear of crowds or large gatherings of people, and were obsessed with trying to find their parents. The children’s development was therefore severely impaired. What’s more, the absence of maternal affection added to the other trauma that these young people suffered.

4) The roles of children and teenagers involved in or opposed to the extermination process:

There were some children or teenagers who opposed this process and they demonstrated this by shouting or sabotaging work because they wanted justice to prevail. They may also have been beaten or tortured, abused in concentration camps or been sent for immediate extermination.

The role of children or teenagers in the extermination process was significant, because some of the SS officers felt empathy but were under constant threat and had to obey their superiors. The teenagers were only used to work in the factories, unlike the children who, since they were too young, were executed.

5) How does your work contribute to keeping the memory of the deportation alive? And that of Marcelle?

Our work contributes to keeping alive the memory of the deportation and of Marcelle since:

• we carried out research.
• we have understood how the process unfolded.
• we contacted witnesses and asked them to tell us their story.
• we investigated to find and retrieve evidence of the victims’ status.

We also want to pay special tribute to Marcelle Korssia, who lived through this experience at only 7 years old.

6) Can you list some adjectives to describe Marcelle’s life?

TUMULTUOUS, TRAGIC, TRAUMATIC, POIGNANT.

7) Which books in the library provide an insight into Marcelle’s life?

• Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France (Memorial to the deported Jewish children of France) by Serge Klarsfeld, because Marcelle Korssia is mentioned by name, which is the proof that she was indeed a child victim of the deportation.
• Le garçon au pyjama rayé (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) by John Boyne, which is about a 9-year-old child, almost the same age as Marcelle. We can, thanks to this book, understand the perspective of this child, the son of a Nazi officer, and the violence he describes.
• Dites-le à vos enfants (Tell it to your children) by Stéphane Bruchfeld and Paul A. Levine. This book explains what happened to the people arrested and sent to the camps in great detail, which helped us understand what Marcelle went through.

Sources: ¹⁶

III) The exhibition in the library: pooling and presentation of students’ work on all 6 investigations, school outings, testimonies, visuals, sources compared to historical silences.

 

IV) Students’ observations

BRAVO to Leina, Asma, Sohane, Alya, Soilha, Anita and Lena with the guidance of Ms. Laetitia Bouillon, their German teacher and Ms. Morgane Boutant, their History and Geography teacher.

1 Marcelle’s birth certificate, dated August 16, 1936, ref. 21 P 470 108 Ministry of Veterans and War Victims archives, provided by the “Convoi 77” non-profit association and Serge Klarsfeld in Le mémorial des enfants juifs déportés de France, FFDJF, 1994.

2 1953 certificate sent by the Bouches du Rhône Departmental Administration, dated March 30, 1953, ref. 21 P 470 108 Ministry of Veterans and War Victims archives, provided by the “Convoi 77” non-profit association

3 https://ressources.memorialdelashoah.org/notice.php?q=tamar%20korcia&spec_expand=1&start=0

4 Official report, dated June 2, 1951, ref. 21 P 470 108 Ministry of Veterans and War Victims archives, provided by the “Convoi 77” non-profit association

5 Application for the status of deported person for Marcelle, requested by Paulette, dated March 28, 1953, ref. 21 P 470 108 Ministry of Veterans and War Victims archives, provided by the “Convoi 77” non-profit association

6 1953 certificate sent by the Bouches du Rhône Departmental Administration, dated March 30, 1953, ref. 21 P 470 108 Ministry of Veterans and War Victims archives, provided by the “Convoi 77” non-profit association.

7 Application for the status of deported person for Marcelle, requested by Paulette, dated March 28, 1953, ref. 21 P 470 108, Ministry of Veterans and War Victims archives, provided by the “Convoi 77” non-profit association.

8 Shoah Memorial webpage for Marcelle Korssia

9 Shoah Memorial webpage for Marcelle Korssia

10 Information received in response to an email sent by the students on December 22, 2021 to the Departmental Archives of Bouches du Rhône Maritimes, according to Véronique Raguseo.

11 Political deportee card issued for Marcelle, ref. 2294 W 32, Information received in response to an email sent by the students on November 25, 2021 to the Departmental Archives of Bouches du Rhône Maritimes, according to Véronique Raguseo.

12 Application for the status of political deportee for Marcelle, requested by Paulette, dated December 5, 1955, ref. 21 P 470 108 Ministry of Veterans and War Victims archives, provided by the “Convoi 77” non-profit association.

13 Shoah Memorial page for Yaya Korssia

14 Telephone call from students on January 11, 2022 to Ms. Toros-Marter, who was deported on Convoy 74 and shared information with them.

15 https://njjewishnews.timesofisrael.com/shoa-orphan-rediscovers-her-lost-siblings/

16 Sources about the historical silences:

– Michelle PERROT, Les femmes ou les silences de l’Histoire, Flammarion, Paris, 2020. Quatrième de couverture.

– Association MNEMOSYNE, Coordination Geneviève DERMENJIAN, Irène JAMI, Annie ROUQUIER, Françoise THEBAUD, La place des femmes dans l’histoire, une histoire mixte, Belin, Paris, 2010. Chapitre : Femmes et hommes dans les guerres, les démocraties et les totalitarismes (1914-1945).

– Mémoire vivante, Dossier pédagogique du CNRD 2008-2009, Les enfants et les adolescents dans le système concentrationnaire nazi, Bulletin de la Fondation pour la mémoire de la déportation, numéro 57, Paris, septembre 2008.