Marie BACRY

1. Introduction

Marie Jeanne Bacry was born on August 25,1932 in the 18th district of Paris, France. She lived at 1 rue Fernand Labori in Paris.

2. Childhood

Marie’s father, Amran Bacry was born in 1892 in Algiers, in Algeria. Her mother was called Messaouda Fortunée Tordjman.

Marie had four brothers: Sylvain, the eldest, was born on February 19, 1924; next came Elie, born on July 5, 1926; Claude, born on June 14, 1931 and André, the youngest, born on August 21, 1936. According to the records, Marie and her brothers lived for a time at 70 avenue Secrétan in Paris. This was the Lucien-de-Hirsch school, but it was bombed. The school later became a home for Jewish orphans. However, these children were rounded up and deported on Convoy 77 on July 31, 1944.

3. Deportation

Marie is arrested because she was Jewish (or “Israelite”) on July 22, 1944. The Germans were aware of her religion because the family had previously had to declare it. Nazism was based on a racist, anti-Semitic ideology. For the Nazis, all groups, races or peoples (they used these words interchangeably) possess certain characteristics that are passed on from one generation to the next and everyone shared the inherent characteristics of their “race”. The Nazis were also proponents of Social Darwinism, which categorized human beings as evolving races, of which the fittest survived. For them, the Jewish religion had no reason to exist: they explained this by stereotyping Jews and Jewish attitudes and behaviors. Minorities other than Jews are also targeted: gypsies, people with disabilities, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, outcasts and political opponents, for example.

She was interned in a camp in Drancy, a working-class town about three miles northeast of Paris. She was deported from Drancy to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and killing center on July 31, 1944, together with her brothers Claude and André. Auschwitz is located in what is currently Poland, in an areas that was occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. It was one of the world’s largest concentration camps and killing centers. The travelling conditions on the train were extremely harsh: large numbers of people were crammed in together, there was no food or sanitary facilities, and they were given no information about the length or duration of the journey.

 

When she was deported, Marie had already been separated from her father and her brothers Sylvain and Elie, who had already been deported on June 30, 1944 from Drancy to Auschwitz on the previous transport, Convoy 76.

Marie’s deportation number was 25,367. On July 1, 1946, she still had not returned from the camps. As a result, she was officially declared to have died soon after she arrived at Auschwitz, on August 5, 1944, at the age of 11 1/2. The policy at Auschwitz was that children under 14 and adults over 55 were murdered on arrival, as they were deemed to be unable to work.

4. After Marie’s death

On April 9, 1948, the Seine civil court declared that Marie Jeanne Bacry had “died for France”. That same year, Messaouda Fortunée Tordjman, Marie’s mother, began researching what had happened to her daughter, who had never returned to France after being deported. In 1956, the French Ministry of Veterans and Victims of War granted Marie the status of “political deportee”. As a result, her mother Messaouda received a check for 12,000 francs from the French State.

Sources

1. Source: Defense Historical Service, AC 21 P 420 310, Dossier individuel de Marie, Jeanne BACRY.

Links

1. https://ressources.memorialdelashoah.org/notice.php?q=bacry&spec_expand=1&start=7
2. https://ressources.memorialdelashoah.org/notice.php?q=bacry&spec_expand=1&start=4
3. https://ressources.memorialdelashoah.org/notice.php?q=bacry&spec_expand=1&start=0
4. https://ressources.memorialdelashoah.org/notice.php?q=bacry&spec_expand=1&start=1
5. https://ressources.memorialdelashoah.org/notice.php?q=bacry&spec_expand=1&start=3
6. https://ressources.memorialdelashoah.org/notice.php?q=bacry&spec_expand=1&start=5
7. https://ressources.memorialdelashoah.org/notice.php?q=bacry&spec_expand=1&start=6
8. https://www.auschwitz.org/en/french/
9. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/fr/article/antisemitism

List of deportees whose biographies have been written by students from the Fernand-Léger junior high school in Vierzon, in the Cher department of France, under the guidance of their history and geography teacher, Ms. Mahieu:

• Marie BACRY
• Joseph CHERESS
• Noma CZARKA
• Paul GEVERTZ
• Henri HOCHBERG
• Gaston LEIBOVICE
• Myriam SONNENBLICK
• Daniel STEPANSKI