Renée (Rivka) GRINBERG

Renée (Rivbaka) Grinberg in the late 1940s, after she married Maurice Nedjar © Family archives

Rivbaka Grinberg, (the town hall registrar misspelled her first name as Rivbaka, rather than Rivka), who began to be known as Renée when she started school, was born on July 22, 1925 in the Saint-Louis hospital in the 10th district of Paris. She was deported to Auschwitz at the age of nineteen, and was the only one of five deported family members who survived.

We were able to retrace Renée’s life story with the help of the various historical records. In addition to writing this biography, we produced some maps in order to compile an “Atlas of the Grinberg family”, and recorded a series of podcasts. These are included throughout the biography.

You will find the Atlas, in French here.

The family emigrated to France from Eastern Europe

The first podcast report, in French:

Renée’s father, Shil Grinberg, was born on January 16, 1904 in Bar, in Vinnytsia, which was then in the Russian Empire but is now in the Ukraine, not far from the Romanian border. He appears to have grown up a little further south, however, in Secureni in Bessarabia, in present-day Moldavia. According to the records, his parents were Leib (Louis) Grinberg and Freida Rothstein, but oddly, he also appears to have had or lived with a second family, Mendel and Chana Reider, who, along with their daughter Doudle, died while on a death march in 1943 [1].  According to his naturalization application, Shil had two younger brothers.

Shil arrived in France as a Russian refugee (he had a passport issued by the right of asylum department in 1924, which was renewed in 1930). He was a secondhand dealer at the Saint-Ouen flea market (and later became a delivery driver, but possibly not until 1941).

Renée’s mother, Esther Gittel Spatz (Schlank/Shank), who was born on December 16, 1902 in Siedlanka, a suburb of Lezajsk, a small town some 30 miles northeast of Rzeszow, which was then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire but is now in Poland. Her parents were Hinde Spatz and Zolme Schank.

Esther’s parents wanted to send their children “to America” in order to escape poverty and, more importantly, the pogroms. Her hometown of Lezajsk also got caught up in the fighting between the Russians and Austro-Hungarians between November 1914 and May 1915, which would hardly have enticed them to stay.

Below are two maps that chart their journey into exile.

Esther met Shil Grinberg in 1922 or 1923. He had arrived in France from Bessarabia or Moldavia, she from Poland. They were not yet 20, and both were hoping to emigrate to America (Esther had a sister in Brooklyn) but in the end, they stayed on in Paris. They met in a refugee “shelter” on rue Lamarck and then set up home together in a shanty-town in the Saint-Ouen flea market, an area in which many Jews from Eastern Europe lived. Between themselves, they always spoke Yiddish. They were naturalized as French citizens on December 4, 1933. The Grinberg family built up a network of work colleagues, neighbors and friends, including two other families from Eastern Europe, the Blumbergs and the Schlosses (or Szlos), whose children all played together.

As a child, Esther had never been interesting in learning to read and write. “She was a savage,” her daughter Renée used to quip. She regretted it later in life, and insisted that her children did not follow her example. Renée, when she was around 6, began to read the newspapers to her and help her learn French. Esther never let her children speak Yiddish and only let them speak French at home, although when she said, “Kindlerkh, kimt shoyn!” they obviously understood that they had to come, and if she added, “Kimt zim Tish!”, they knew it was mealtime.

The move from the shanty-town to a low-cost housing development near Porte d’Aubervilliers

When Rivbaka/Rivka/Renée was born, her parents were living at 35 rue du Couédic in the 14th district of Paris (but they were no longer there at the time of the 1926 census). When her brother Maurice was born, two years later, they were living at 7 rue Saint-Laurent in the 10th district.

At the time, her parents had not yet been legally married in the town hall, although they had been married in a religious ceremony conducted by a rabbi. Shil and Esther were married on July 22, 1930 in Saint-Ouen. Shil officially declared himself to be Rivka’s father on October 21, 1929 in Saint-Ouen, and Esther declared herself to be both Maurice and Rivka’s mother on July 16, 1930, shortly before she and Shil were married. As a result of their parents’ marriage, they became legitimate children. Such late declarations of parentage were not uncommon in working-class families.

They were then living 100 rue Jules Vallès: a street in the flea market, not far from what would become the Malik market in the 1940s. They lived in a neat, well-kept shack in what was known as the “zone”, a shanty town that had sprung up on the site of some old fortifications (now under the Paris ring road). Renée’s father became a secondhand dealer, hunting for old objects in the nicer neighborhoods, initially with a handcart. Then, so he could sell larger pieces of furniture and earn more money, he bought a horse called KikI, and a horse-drawn cart. Later still, he bought a motor car, a Citroën convertible.

Rivka, who by this time was known as Renée, went to school in Saint-Ouen (at the Auguste-Blanqui school?) for as long as the family lived in the area, and probably even after they moved

In fact, although they did not move far away, their new address was in Paris. According to the 1936 census, they moved to 18 rue Charles Lauth, in the 18th district of the city. Rue Charles Roth was part of a low-rent housing complex built in 1935. Only French nationals were allowed to live there (which the Grinbergs were, as they had been naturalized!).

 

Here is a map of the area around rue Charles Lauth, in Porte d’Aubervilliers:

Their apartment had all “mod cons”: two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen with a coal-fired stove, a shower and a toilet. Some other families who lived near them in the shanty town, also second-hand goods dealers, moved to the same housing complex at the same time: Renée continued to go to visit her neighbors, the Szlos family, to read comic books in peace and quiet. The family was reasonably religious: Esther prayed every Friday evening. As for Shil, as far as Renée remembered, he was more of a Communist.

The first signs of trouble

In 1934, the family went on vacation to Poland, where they stayed with Esther’s sister and her family. Esther took with her the four children that she had at the time: Renée, who was 9, Maurice, 7, Jeannette, 4 and Berthe, who was just a year old. They did not book seats on the train, and the children had to sleep in the overhead baggage nets. The children remembered the Polish countryside vividly, as they had only ever known Saint-Ouen. Their grandmother was a wonderful woman, who still had four of her children with her, but the eldest sister had emigrated to America (where Esther had also intended to go), and another sister and two brothers had moved to Palestine.

They had to cross Germany on the way to Poland. It was shortly after Hitler came to power, and Esther must surely have heard how difficult life was becoming for the Jews there.

Education

Even after the family moved to rue Charles Lauth, Renée probably continued to go to school in Saint-Ouen. She only started at the elementary school at 4 rue Charles Hermite, just around the corner from rue Charles Lauth, in 1938, and only for the last year of compulsory education for children who were not going on to high school.

She passed her elementary school leaving certificate. As is often the case in school records from that period, the teacher’s assessment, written in July 1939, comes across as rather unkind: “nice girl, diligent, of average intelligence” (although she said the same of almost all the girls in the class!).

Renée became a seamstress

Renée then took a sewing course at the O.R.T. (Organisation Reconstruction Travail, a Jewish vocational training center), probably between 1939 and 1941. In 1942, she became a junior seamstress. However, Jews were soon forbidden from working in most jobs, and Renée had to wear the yellow star.

Evacuated to Brittany

The family was evacuated out of Paris in 1939: they had a large number of children and Esther was pregnant again, so were a priority case. Renée was on vacation in Saint-Léon in the Allier department at the time. It was the 3rd summer she had gone there with a group of other children from Paris. The social services arranged for them to spend some time in the countryside. They were staying on a farm (?) that belonged to “a very nice lady” called Mrs. Combarez. They had real butter and French pancakes, and there were animals, including a pig. But when the family was evacuated to Guerrouette in the Loire-Atlantique region of France, Renée’s father, Shil, went to collect her. Esther gave birth to Daniel in January 1940 in Saint-Nazaire.

Renée’s father was rounded-up and disappeared

The second podcast report, in French

When the family returned to Paris, life became increasingly precarious. Jews were at greater risk than ever, and the anti-Jewish legislation that barred most of them from working made everyday life even more difficult for them than for the rest of the French population. Jews were no longer allowed to go to the movies, to local square and parks, to own a telephone, a bicycle… or even a car!

When Esther asked her husband if he had had a good day at work, “Ni, vous mit dayne gesheftn?”, he grew increasingly negative : “Gournisht mit gournisht” and the children understood that he meant “no, not at all,” and that it was a catastrophe “Finster iz mir! A brokh”. And then Renée might have heard, “Oy vay! Vous vet vern fin indz?“, “Oh la la! What’s going to become of us?”, for Esther and Shil always spoke Yiddish between themselves. And no doubt they also discussed with what to do about the children. “Vous tit mit di kindas?” Shelter them? Hide them? “Zoln mir zey yo avekshikn ahin? Ofn dorf?” Send them to the countryside? All in all, back in Paris, the family life was becoming very difficult indeed.

The couple then went their separate ways: they split up for a while because Shil was unfaithful to Esther, although they got back together soon afterwards and had another baby, Monique.

But then in late August, 1941, tragedy struck: Shil was arrested in a little restaurant in Saint-Ouen that was popular with Jewish flea market traders. Between August 20 and 24, 1941, the French police and the German Feldgendarmerie carried out a major round-up in Paris, during which they arrested French as well as foreign Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 50. On the 21st, they targeted the 18^th district, and from there they only had a go a few hundred yards to get to Saint-Ouen. In all, 4,232 people were taken to Drancy camp, which from this point on it became an internment camp for Jews.

Prisoners were still allowed to send and receive mail at the time, so the family must have been aware of what was happening there, and therefore of what lay in store for them too. They would also have heard the scare stories circulating within the Jewish community. Renée and her mother, Esther, went to Drancy to “see” Shil. They had to wait in the bistro opposite the camp (no doubt the same one that is now opposite the Cité de la Muette) until the prisoners came out on the balconies, but as Renée later explained: “It was very difficult to communicate with them because the guards were so intimidating”, even though they demanded tips from the families.

With no income of her own and a family to support, Esther soon found it hard to make ends meet. She managed to secure an allowance from the U.G.I.F. (Union Générale des Israélites de France, or General Union of French Jews) [2] for her seven children, as well as ration coupons and a soldier’s pension (had Shil served in the army in 1939?). She had to sell off everything she had that was of any value, such as the car Shil used for work.

The younger children were sent into hiding

After Shil was arrested, life became even harder for the family. In March 1943, their naturalization was cancelled retrospectively, so they all lost their French nationality.

In 1943, the younger children (except for the baby, Monique) were sent into hiding in Brittany, thanks to the assistance of Father Devaux from the order of Notre-Dame de Sion. This religious order, founded by two Alsatian Jewish brothers who converted to Catholicism in 1843, was instrumental in rescuing Jewish children during the Occupation, although they sometimes had them baptized contrary to their families’ wishes [3].

Two sisters who lived in Amanlis, near Rennes, took them in. In 1943, these two young women, who were themselves wards of the French welfare system, had decided to open a home for abandoned children in Janzé. The nuns from Notre-Dame de Sion placed six children from the Paris area with them. The social worker who brought the children to them explained that their parents had been deported and that they had no food ration cards. In late 1943, the shelter was moved to Amanlis. A local support network, made up of some farmers, a baker and Les Docks du Ménage, a Rennes-based firm, helped out and provided the food. Jeannette, Berthe, Simon and Daniel Grinberg were placed with two families in the village. Their older sister, Renée, took them there because Esther had too strong a Polish accent, so could not travel around without drawing attention to herself. Their lives were saved as a result, as were those of all the other children who were kept hidden in Amanlis. Renée, who was also deported but survived her time in the camps, went to collect them after she returned to France in May or June 1945.

However, neither Renée nor her mother found the strength to leave little Monique in Amanlis, either in 1943, at the same time as the others, or in late May/early June 1944, just before the Normandy landings: she really was still only a baby!

Renée too was arrested and deported, along with her brother Maurice and baby Monique

As the Allies were approaching Paris and the bombing disrupted the railways, Aloïs Brunner, the Nazi commandant of Drancy camp, was determined to dispatch one last convoy to Auschwitz. He ordered increasing numbers of roundups, particularly in apartments where Jewish families were known to be living, whether or not they had registered themselves in the census in 1941. The low-cost housing development in rue Charles-Lauth was among the places targeted.

The third podcast report, in French

Esther and three of her children, Renée, Maurice and Monique, were rounded-up on the night of July 8, 1944. Five men (militiamen, French police and Gestapo agents) arrived at their apartment, on the pretext of checking their identity papers, but then arrested them. Some neighbors, who were also their friends, such as Simone Benhamu who lived just a stone’s throw away on boulevard Ney, and the Blumberg family who lived on the floor above, were also arrested and deported. The concierge was aware of the incident but, bowing to the pressure, was unable to do anything about it, although she did try to make a grab for Monique in an attempt to save her. They were all taken to Drancy, including Mrs. Blumberg, who was nine months pregnant.

When they arrived in Drancy, they were sent to room 2 on staircase 18 (except for Maurice, who was sent to room 4 with the other men). They remained there until July 31, 1944, when they were deported to Auschwitz on Convoy 77.

Along with their neighbors and friends, they were all on the transport list for the convoy that left Bobigny station for Auschwitz on July 31, 1944. This convoy later became known as Convoy 77.

They were all loaded into cattle cars with straw on the floor, one bucket of water between 60 people and a second bucket as a toilet. They had only a little bread to eat, and there were no windows to let in fresh air in the stifling summer heat. According to Renée, during the three-day journey to Auschwitz, Maurice tried to make his mother and sisters as comfortable as possible in the cattle car, and shared out the water. Whenever he could, he gave his mother a break by taking baby Monique in his arms, but Monique, who was distraught, tried to cling on to her mother.

The general atmosphere was ghastly, as sick and older people died along the way.

From Auschwitz to Kratzau

Of the 1306 people who were deported on Convoy 77, 470 were selected to enter the camp for forced labor, and Renée was among them. Her mother and her baby sister, like all the other mothers and children, were loaded onto trucks and taken straight to the gas chambers, where they were murdered.

When she entered the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp Tondue, Renée was shaved all over and her hair was shorn, then her left arm was tattooed with the number A-16 715. Shortly afterwards, she was told what had happened to her mother and sister. As for her brother Maurice, given that the men’s camp was a few miles away, she just hoped that he too had not been sent to the gas chambers. In a testimony recorded in 2006, Renée recounted how, by an incredible stroke of luck, she met Maurice for the last time a few weeks after they arrived in Auschwitz.

On September 20, 1944, Renée was loaded onto the first transport to the Kratzau camp (which now in the Czech Republic but was in German occupied territory at the time). A number of other young women from Convoy 77 were with her. They were made to work in an ammunition factory, several miles away from the camp.

Life in Kratzau was slightly less arduous than it had been in Birkenau, but more importantly, Dr. Mengele was not there to select women to be sent to the gas chambers. There were no gas chambers at all in fact, just beatings, lice, diseases and constant hunger. The women were made to get up at 5 a.m. for roll call and were then given only one bowl between three with a slice of sausage (pork, in other words, an animal that Jews were forbidden to eat), a piece of black bread and a little margarine each in the morning, and a thin soup in the evening. On Sundays, they had a small portion of goulash with a little mashed potato. During her time in Kratzau, Renée and friend, Simone Benhamu lived side by side. They worked together in the factory and shared the same wooden bunk in the barracks.

The factory was several miles away, and the women had to walk there early in the morning, and come back late at night, in the cold, after a twelve-hour shift. Sometimes they had to work nights. The factory also employed non-Jewish deportees from France, Poland and the Czech Republic, who lived in a nearby village. This meant they could keep in touch with what was happening in the outside world.

After eight months of back-breaking work, during which the solidarity between the “girls” kept them going, Renée and her fellow prisoners heard that the Germans were about to surrender. Nevertheless, the mood in the camp was one of fear, with rumors that the Germans had mined the camp and were planning to blow it up behind them when they left. In the end, the Nazis abandoned the camp on the night of May 7, 1945, and the Red Army arrived the following day, May 8.

Renée later recounted that when they realized they were free, the girls were “hysterical”: and “broke down the kitchen door and ate some processed cheese and a sugar cube”. In reality, however, there was hardly anything left to eat, and the Soviet troops had made no plans to help the deportees. There was no food and no transport to take them home, so they had to fend for themselves. The first step was to ask the mayor of the local village for a travel pass: he too was now free of the Nazi yoke.

It was hard to get people out of the Soviet occupied area, but after a long, convoluted journey, Renée was repatriated to Longuyon in France on May 20. When she got back to Paris, she had a medical exam. She weighed just 73 pounds, meaning that she had lost 30 pounds during her time in the camps.

The return to civilian life in France

The third podcast report, in French

When she returned from the camps in 1945, Renée, then aged 19, was given temporary accommodation at the Hotel Lutetia. This was an old Parisian palace that the German had taken over and used for as their security and counter-espionage headquarters during the Occupation and which was then requisitioned for use as a reception center for deportees when they arrived back in France.

On May 20 or 21, 1945, the Red Cross took Renée’s in and carried out a cursory medical check-up. The doctor who examined her diagnosed some stomach and lung problems, but described her overall condition as “average”. Survivors, most of whom had no identity papers, were issued with a temporary identity certificate, a small sum of money (60 francs at the time) and some clothes, as many of them were still wearing the old clothes or uniforms in which they returned from the camps.

They asked the survivors if they had anyone to take them in, but Renée had no one. She and her friend Simone Behamu, whose parents also survived, took the Paris subway on their own. As for Renée, her parents were dead and she held out little hope for her brother Maurice.

During the journey, the other passengers stared at the two young women. Renée felt unwell on the train so got off at Porte de la Chapelle, split up from Simone and headed home alone. The concierge gave her back the keys to the family apartment, which, unlike the Blumberg and Shloss families’ apartments, which were just a stone’s throw away on rue Emile Bertin, had not been plundered. Only a few things had been looted, but the most of it remained intact. One of the most tragic details was that she found one of Monique’s little shoes, which must have come off during the arrest.

Renée was in a dreadful state, but with the help of some friends, she finally managed to get back on her feet. A few days after she got back her friend Vernée and her mother Liliane, who were deeply worried about her, took her to a place in the country to rest and recuperate. A doctor prescribed a slow-replenishment diet and seawater injections for eight days, and Renée gradually gained weight and became stronger. An old acquaintance, whom she and her mother had met when they were evacuated to Saint-Nazaire, contacted Renée as soon as she heard she was back in France. Renée stayed with her for a month, during which time she returned to her normal weight (around 60 kg), largely as a result of a nutritious, regular diet.

Maurice never came home. Renée, who still harbored some hope, given that some deportees from the “Soviet zone” had to wait months to come home after the German surrender.

When she felt better, she set about retrieving her younger siblings, who had been kept hidden during the war. However, one of the women refused to hand over the children on the grounds that Renée was not yet of legal age (which was 21 in those days). She then approached the O.P.E.J. (Œuvre de Protection des Enfants Juifs, or Organization for the Protection of Jewish Children), whose staff helped her appoint a legal guardian, a Mr. Rothenberg. After a great deal of paperwork, Renée was appointed alternate guardian, and was able to take back the children in the summer of 1945. By force of circumstance, she found herself in sole charge of the family. It was not until 1960 that an aunt from America, when she heard they had survived, got back in touch with them. For many years, Renée regretted that such help had not been forthcoming in 1946, when she needed it most.

On March 7, 1946, Renée married Robert Maurice Nedjar, who, together with some friends from rue Charles Lauth, had been involved in the Resistance. She kept her sister Jeannette with her in Paris but the other children were placed in children’s homes, as she lacked the resources to care for them all. In 1949, after she got married and became pregnant, Renée made the difficult decision to have the two youngest children, Simone and Daniel, adopted by an American family. Up to that point, they had lived in foster homes: Renée felt she simply could not manage everyone and everything. She only met up with them again in the 1980s.

From 1945 to 1976, Renée and her family lived at 18 rue Charles Lauth. Her sisters Jeannette and Berthe initially lived in the same building, but in a room on the 6th floor. Her sister Jeannette then moved to 18 rue Ramey.

In 1945, Renée went to work for the French Post Office. She then worked in the leather goods trade with her husband. They had three children, Alain, Georges and Maurice, in 1947, 1949 and 1956. She bought a little store at the Flea Market in 1962. In 2000, she moved to Marcoussis, in the Essonne department. In 2018, she was living in Villejuif, in the Val-de-Marne department.

Renée died in 2024, at the age of 99. She is buried in the Jewish section of the Bagneux cemetery in Paris. Her sisters had died a few years earlier, Jeannette in 2018 and Berthe in 2019. Her brother Daniel also passed away in 2018: like Simone, he made a life for himself in the United States, married and had two sons; Simone had at least one daughter.

Renée was a member of the French Auschwitz veterans’ society and, from 1996 onwards, shared her experiences of the deportation. She also met with members of the Convoy 77 association and attended one of its annual general meetings.

Notes

[1] This second family remains a mystery, but Renée and Jeannette Grinberg filled in testimonial sheets at Yad Vashem for these two people, stating that they were their granddaughters and great-nieces.

[2] The U.G.I.F. was founded in 1941 by the Vichy government at the behest of the Germans, and was supervised by the Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (General Commissariat for Jewish Questions). It was, among other things, responsible for helping Jews in need.

[3] Renée told Laurence Klejman that she had made contact with a social worker who acted as an intermediary between her and the nuns in the 18th district of Paris.

Sources

• File on Rivbaka/Renée Grinberg held by the Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the French Ministry of Defense Historical Service;
• Paris archives (civil registry, census data, school records);
• Interview with Renée Nadjar née Grinberg, filmed in 2006 by Jérémy Nedjar;
• Records for various members of the extended family on the Yad Vashem website;
• Summary of a discussion between Renée Nedjar née Grinberg, Laurence Klejman and Muriel Baude on December 28, 2018 (with Renée’s handwritten corrections).

Thanks

We would like to thank Renée Nedjar’s son, Alain, and her nephews, Jacques Nedjar and Olivier Szlos, for their personal accounts and the many valuable documents still in their possession, which contributed greatly to this biography, and David Choukroun, who helped us trace the family of Renée Nedjar, Esther’s daughter, supplied Shil and Esther Grinberg’s naturalization file and helped us with our research.

Thanks also to: Claire Stanislawski at the Shoah Memorial in Paris and to the guides at the Shoah Memorial at Drancy; to Charlène Ordonneau from the Saint-Ouen municipal archives, who allowed us to explore the archives relating to the “zone” and the flea market; and to Macha Fogel of the French Yiddish Cultural Centre for giving us a brief introduction to the Yiddish language.

We would also like to thank Laurence Klejman for proofreading our biographies of the Grinberg family and providing us with a wealth of additional information, making them the most detailed we could ever have wished for!