Mordo CHETOVY

Photo: Mordo Chetovy,
Source: holocaust-history.org

Mordo Chetovy was born on May 22, 1926 in the 11th district of Paris[1]. His parents were Moïse Chetovy (born on May 3, 1896 in Constantinople, in Turkey) and Rosa Nichli (born in 1895, also in Constantinople). Moïse and Rosa lived at 113 rue de Montreuil in the 11th district of Paris. Mordo had an older brother, Jacob, who was also known as Jacques[2].

The surname Chetovy is most likely a variant of Chetrit, an old Jewish name. The Chetovy family hailed from Turkey, and the name also has North African and Turkish connections. Given that the parents were born in Turkey, they probably fled the country at some point between the wars, as did many other Jews. They were among the Jewish diaspora in Turkey[3].

Mordo, who also went by the name of Marcel, went to the Voltaire school in the 11th district of Paris. He appears to have been a lively, confident boy, as this account by one of his classmates, Henri Farsy, testified:

“The 14th of July celebrations were organized between friends. Each of us paid the obligatory contribution to the great master of ceremonies, our elder, Marcel Chetovy, who was in charge of the preparation and flawless organization of this day of public festivities. As night fell, the fireworks display began. With each detonation, the multicolored flowers burst open, exploding to the delight of the audience, always eager for more. These national celebrations took place at 113 rue de Montreuil, in a derelict courtyard. Few tenants would have lived in these shabby, uncomfortable old terraced buildings, apart from three very poor families from Istanbul: the Covos, the Eskenazys and the Chetovys. A pedestrian walkway linked Rue Alexandre Dumas and Rue de Montreuil, facilitating interaction between friends of the same religion”[4]

The Second World War broke out in September 1939 and not long afterwards, on June 22, 1941 France signed the armistice with Germany at Rethondes, in the Oise department of France. France was split into two zones and the newly-formed Vichy government began collaborating with the Nazis. It was in the context of their anti-Semitic policy that Mordo’s father was arrested during a roundup on August 20, 1941. Mordo himself was spared, however, partly because he was born in France but also because, at the age of 15, he was too young to be arrested. The arrest criteria for that particular roundup were that only foreign Jewish men should be arrested.

On May 29, 1942, the French government issued a decree that mirrored Germany’s anti-Semitic legislation. Marshall Philippe Pétain himself endorsed and signed the decree, which related to the status of Jews in occupied France. Jews were barred from working as civil servants and in entertainment, schools and universities. They were no longer allowed to use public transport except in certain circumstances, or to ride bicycles or own radios, and everyone over the age of six had to wear a yellow star. Jews were also required to register at their local town hall. If they did not abide by these new rules, they risked being arrested. Mordo was arrested, most likely on June 30, 1944, for not wearing his yellow star in the correct way. According to both his mother and the prison register, the German authorities arrested him in the Place de la République in Paris. His father was arrested later in the day (this was in fact the second time he had been arrested; the first was in the winter of 1941, but he was then released due to ill health).

A page from the prison register that lists the arrests of both father and son. Mordo was in fact arrested before his father, but the German police probably interrogated him for some time before they handed him over to the French. Might this have been what led to his father being arrested too?

The following day, on July 1, 1944, Mordo and his father were interned in Drancy camp. Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Blum was in charge of Drancy at the time. When Mordo arrived in the camp, he was assigned the serial number 24681[5]. Such numbers were used instead of the names of the people interned in the camp. Mordo would have had to endure dreadful living conditions in Drancy.  The camp was overcrowded and rife with various contagious diseases. The internees had to follow certain rules specific to this camp, including a ban on making noise between 10:30 p.m. and 5:45 a.m. so that the French military police who were guarding the camp could get some sleep. Despite all this, on the day that he was deported, Mordo left an optimistic graffiti-style message on a wall in the camp.

“Marcel Chetovy and Moïse Chetovy. Arrived on July.. Deported on July 31 in very, very good spirits and hoping to be back soon”, Source : holocaust-history.org

On July 31, 1944, Mordo, together with his father[6], was deported to Auschwitz, where they arrived on August 3[7]. They were deported on Convoy 77, the last of the large transports of Jews from Drancy. After the Allies landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the Nazis began deporting as many of the remaining internees as possible.

When he arrived in Auschwitz, Mordo was selected to enter the concentration camp to work. On October 26, 1944, he was transferred to the Struthof camp[8] in Alsace. He arrived there on October 26, 1944 and was assigned prisoner number 99339[9]. His internment card bears a red triangle and a Star of David, meaning that he was deported for political reasons and on grounds of his “race”. He was then transferred again, this time to the Buchenwald camp in Germany, where he arrived on November 26, 1944 and was assigned prisoner number 97988[10]. He died there on December 16, 1944, supposedly of “heart failure”[11]. The German word herzschwäche means “weakness of the heart” or “heart failure”, but the real reason that Mordo died remains unknown: heart conditions were often given as the cause of death as a way of covering up the real reasons that deportees died[12]. He presumably died as a result of the appalling living conditions in the camps and constant abuse. His father Moïse, who appears to have been transferred from camp to camp at the same time as Mordo, also died in Buchenwald.

 

The family had applied for French citizenship on December 17, 1929. In accordance with the 1927 French nationality legislation, a justice of the peace granted Mordo French citizenship posthumously on January 23, 1954, almost 10 years after he died[13].

Notes & references

[1] Birth certificate, © Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, ref. 21 P 435 982 9; prison register © Paris Police Headquarters archives, ref. CC 2-8.

[2] There are few references to Jacques in the archives due to the fact that he was not deported with the rest of his family. We do not know what happened to him during and after the war.

[3] His father, Moïse Chetovy, was born in Constantinople in 1896.

[4] Taken from the biography of Rebecca Farsy, who was also deported on Convoy 77 (https://en.convoi77.org/deporte_bio/rebecca-farsy/). The biography was written by a group of 12th grade students at the Maurice Ravel high school in 2023-24, and we would like to thank them for finding it.

[5] File on Mordo Chetovy, © Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, ref. 21 P 435 982 10.

[6] File on Mordo Chetovy, © Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, ref. 21 P 435 982 14.

[7] Deportation follow-up sheet (File on Mordo Chetovy © Arolsen archives, Buchenwald collection, ref. 5669155)

[8] File on Mordo Chetovy © Arolsen archives, Buchenwald collection, ref. 5669152)

[9] Ibid.

[10] File on Mordo Chetovy © Arolsen archives, Buchenwald collection, ref. 5669151, 5669153 and 5669157.

[11] The entry on the list of deaths and on his follow-up sheet reads “Herzschwäche bei Phlegmone” (Heart failure with phlegmon). File on Mordo Chetovy © Arolsen archives, ref. 70967769 and 566 9153)

[12] Eva Bitton and Théophile Leroy, “Enregistrer la mort à Auschwitz : le certificat de décès comme source pour l’histoire de la Shoah”, (Recording death at Auschwitz: the death certificate as a source on the history of the Holocaust), 2022, https://lubartworld.cnrs.fr/enregistrer-la-mort-a-auschwitz-le-certificat-de-deces-comme-source-pour-lhistoire-de-la-shoah/

[13] File on Mordo Chetovy, © Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, ref. 21 P 435 982 435 982 29.