Rosa GRYNBERG

On February 05, 2024, the thirteen 9th grade students from the La Jonchère International Bilingual school in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, in the Yvelines department of France, embarked on a unique project: writing the biography of Rosa Grynberg. Rosa was just a child when she was deported to Auschwitz on Convoy 77, which left Drancy camp in Paris on July 31, 1944. We know that six million Jews perished and that this number was unprecedented, and yet, somehow, it remains almost impossible for the human mind to grasp. The great strength of the Convoy 77 project is that it focuses on the unique identity of each of the victims. For the next 50 years or, Rosa Grynberg will be more than just a name on a memorial plaque. Her memory will live on in the minds of the thirteen students in the class, of everyone who helped and supported them, and in my own, as their teacher. D. Caquet

A preliminary version of this biography was published in the form of a booklet, written for Rosa’s family. Each of the students played a role in writing the articles and choosing the illustrations.

This photograph of Rosa’s is featured in Léon Grynberg’s Memoirs and is now kept at the Shoah Memorial in Paris. We are not sure when it was taken. It shows young Rosa in a cute little outfit. According to Henri, her adoptive brother, she had brown eyes. At the bottom of the photo, we can see that she is holding a wooden toy with a pixie hat.

2024, the year we spent getting to know Rosa Grynberg

This section was written by Nayla A.F.

“Writing little Rosa’s biography was a very moving experience. I was able to learn more about her family background and pay tribute to Rosa. It has given me a better understanding of the horror of the Shoah.” Nayla A.F.

The Convoy 77 team asked us to write Rosa Grynberg’s story because she lived in Louveciennes, a town near La Celle-Saint-Cloud, where we go to school. We started with just a few records, including civil status information, a deportation file and two photographs. We soon discovered that Rosa’s father, Léon, had also written about her in his memoirs, and it took us several hours of work to fully understand all of the material. We then had to combine the various records in order to reconstruct Rosa’s life.

1. Analysis of the key sources (February). We spent some time studying numerous passages from Rosa’s father Léon Grynberg’s Memoirs, as well as the various official records. Thanks to Léon’s mother, Rosa, who encouraged him to write his story when he was still a young man!

 

1. 1. Studying, reviewing and writing (February to May, 2024). Having pieced together the family tree, we went on to study each of the key moments in Rose’s life, such as the three roundups she experienced. Thanks to Ms. Caquet, who encouraged and supported us!
   2. Finding Léon’s descendants! (February 28, 2024)After several weeks of searching via the Internet, mail and telephone, we managed to track down the Grynberg-Mosewicz family.Thanks to Claire Podetti, who almost wore out the phone book!
   3. Attending memorial ceremonies (April 28 and May 8, 2024).Four students, along with their families and teachers, took part in the Day of Remembrance of the Deportation and the May 8 ceremony in Louveciennes. We were also featured in the local newspaper.Thanks to our friends at Louveciennes Town Hall who kindly donated the wreaths!

1. Visit to the Shoah Memorial in Paris (May 13, 2024).We found the names of Rosa and her parents on the Wall of Names. We also looked at various records relating to Rosa’s internment. Thanks to Claire St. for her warm welcome and great finds!Louveciennes, Sunday April 28, 2024. Four schoolgirls from La Celle-Saint-Cloud read out the poem that Rose’s father wrote for her. His little girl, who was rounded up in Louveciennes in July 1944, died in Auschwitz. She was just 6 years old
2. Video conference with Henri (May 27, 2024).Henri, Rosa’s adoptive brother, spoke with the class to answer some final questions about the history of the family, both before and after the war. Thanks to Ms. M., Henri’s wife, for her patience in getting to grips with Zoom!
3. Presentation of our work to Rosa Grynberg’s family (June 14, 2024).After several months work, we completed and published Rosa’s story. We were delighted to present it to the family!
4. And now?Rosa’s family members were rounded up in Levallois-Perret in 1941 and 1942. Together with the Spuren Foundation, we approached the municipality of Levallois to ask them to allow memorial paving stones to be laid on public land, in front of the door of the family’s former apartment building. Our school has agreed to finance the cost of the paving stones.

Timeline

This section and the illustrations are by Hugo V.

“What really moved me was realizing that Léon’s descendants did not really know the whole story, and that my work could go some way to helping them understand the life of a child they had never met.” Hugo V.

This timeline shows the key events in little Rosa’s life. She was separated from her father at the age of two and from her mother at three, before being murdered at the age of five. During her short life, she was rounded up three times, including in the Vél’d’hiv round-up in 1942. 

 

We worked on two major timelines: one focused solely on Rosa’s lifetime, which led to the version shown here, and a longer timeline covering the whole of the 20th century.

Not only did we need to learn about Rosa’s parents’ lives, from the beginning of the 20th century until their deaths, but we also had to delve into Léon’s post-war research to determine what had happened. The various files relating to their deaths, the granting of deportee status, the applications for naturalization as French citizens and the request for the status of “Died for France” demonstrate that paperwork about Rosa was still circulating until at least 1972!

The date on which a person was deported is often deemed to be the official date of death. However, in Rosa’s case, an error crept in: she was supposedly deported on the convoy on September 15, 1942, whereas in fact she was deported on Convoy 77.

September 15, 1942 is the date cited by the French “Bureau des déportés”, (Office for deportees), which drew up the missing persons certificate in February 1955 (Rose Grynberg (c) Defense Historical Service in Caen, ref. 21P459463). And yet her mother was not deported on this convoy either, but in August 1942. We have no idea how this error came about, but it is still there on the death certificate, issued in 1964, and on the extract from the Levallois-Perret death register.

Rosa’s family tree

This section and the illustrations are by Marie Ange S.

“I was deeply moved by the sheer power of the names engraved on the Wall of Names at the Shoah Memorial in Paris, each of them representing a life stolen and a story shattered. They are a poignant reminder of how important it is not to forget such crimes.” Marie Ange S.

These trees are from the first version of the story, produced in February 2024. Soon afterwards, we were able to complete Rosa’s paternal ancestry, thanks to Léon’s Memoirs. It was much more difficult, however, to reconstruct the maternal branch, the Rotzsztejn family. We had to wait until we visited the Shoah Memorial to find a few more names.

 When we began the project, we thought that we would not be able to go much further back than Rosa’s parents, because the family came from Poland. That all changed, however, when we read Léon’s Memoirs and realized that Rosa’s father had remarried and had more children. We were all delighted to see that Léon had even been a great-grandfather several times over! It was therefore important for us to make a second family tree. This tree has been included in the booklet that we produced for the family, but since it includes photographs of living family members, we decided not to publish it here on the website.

The family’s origins

The Grynbergs came from Novo-Minsk, in Poland, and moved to France in the 1930s

This section was written by Marina A.

“What upset me most was to see that Rosa, her mother and her father were all deported to Auschwitz at different times, never seeing each other again. How sad it is for a little girl to be torn away from her very own family.” Marina A.

Léon Grynberg’s Memoirs proved invaluable as we pieced together the details of Rosa Grynberg’s paternal line. The family was one of many from Poland who arrived in this country between the wars. The Grynbergs came from Novo-Minsk, also known as Minsk-Mazowiecki, some 25 miles east of Warsaw.

Our tree dates back to Rosa Grynberg’s great-grandparents, who were both very “well-versed in the study of Talmud” according to Leon’s testimony. They were the parents of Itzrak-Yossef, who was left in the care of an aunt when his father left for Eretz-Israel (the Land of Israel). The Jewish religion was strictly observed in her household too. In 1902, Itzrak-Yossef married one of his aunt’s daughters, Rosa Lipinska. However, Rosa developed an interest in matters that, over time, began to worry her family.

The following year, the young couple had their first child, Szlama Leibl (Léon in French), who later became Rosa’s father, and another son, Moshe, in 1905. A new branch of the family was born. Their happiness was short-lived, however, as Itzrak-Yossef fell sick and had to remain in hospital. In 1906, Rosa’s father, Avrumkè, was swindled and virtually ruined, after which he died suddenly. His widow, Tchipè, was deeply distressed, and her relationship with her daughter grew increasingly strained. Eventually, Rosa and her two sons decided to move out. Léon tried his best to help his mother, even though he quarreled with her over his interest in religion. In 1914, Itzrak-Yossef died and Rosa found herself alone, with no job and two children to support. She then married Aron Bricks, but the couple never really hit it off and got divorced in the summer of 1924. Meanwhile, the boys had grown up and Tchipè had decided to move to Eretz-Israel.

Finding out more about Rosa’s family

Rue Carnot in Levallois-Perret, old postcard.

Her father, Léon

Léon gradually abandoned his religion and became interested in Haskalah, a school of thought inspired by the Enlightenment, as well as in the Poale Tsion labor movement. He began his career as a printer and then, influenced by his father-in-law, went into the tailoring trade. With the birth of the USSR, he became a communist and became involved in underground activism. He was even imprisoned for over a year, and was released in 1930. It was then that he moved to France.

Her mother, Guitlé

We know very little about Guitlè (or Jutla) Rotsztejn. She came from Falenica, a village near Warsaw in Poland. She was born in 1914 and had two brothers, Noutché and Szmul Aron. She shared the same interest in communism as her husband, whom she met in France. We know that her brother Szmul Rotsztejn married Ruchla Grunberg in Paris, and that they had a daughter, Fanny Rotsztejn. All three of them were deported and killed.

And then came Rosa

Rosa was born soon after her parent’s marriage, which took place on April 30, 1938. Her date of birth, which was incorrectly transcribed on several documents while she was interned, was actually March 12, 1939, as evidenced by the civil register in Clichy, where she was born. Rosa was named after her grandmother, who died in 1938 and had been a great source of inspiration for Léon. Soon after she was born, the family moved to 16 rue Carnot in Levallois-Perret.

The first roundup

The Grynberg family, from the outbreak of war until the “Green Ticket” roundup (May 1941)

This section was written by Antonio F.V.

“What I liked most was how delighted Rosa’s family were when they found out we were interested in their story. It was so inspiring to work on a project to tell the story of a family whose lives were cut short in the camps.” Antonio F.V.

Jews wearing the obligatory yellow star in the Jewish quarter City of Paris Historical Library

 

Rosa was only a few months old in 1939 when the Second World War began after Germany invaded Poland. She was inevitably unaware of the gravity of the situation or the tragedy her family was caught up in, especially from May 1940 onwards, when France was invaded and Paris was bombed.

The previous month, the family had been on vacation with Guitlè’s brothers. They stayed in Dammarie-les-Lys, a little village not far from Paris.

In his Memoirs, Léon wrote that when war was declared, the men wanted to heed the call on the mobilization posters and enlist as volunteers in the French army. However, since they had to wait for the army’s official response, the family had time to return to Paris. There was no work to be had in the capital, and Léon recalls that “French women looked at them with animosity”. Eventually, Rose’s father was called up for the Foreign Legion.

In May 1940, Hitler’s army invaded France and panic ensued: thus began the Exodus. Rosa’s mother, Guitlè, was lucky enough to catch the last train from Paris to Niort, in the Deux-Sèvres department of France. The crowds were so thick that Léon had to pass Rosa through the window to his wife! Guitlè was hoping to meet up with her sister.

The separation was short-lived. Léon eventually joined the Polish army stationed in Bressuire, also in the Deux-Sèvres department. He was able to see his family in the evenings. As the Germans approached, the Polish troops were thrown into disarray, and Léon, who had only just enlisted, found himself, along with some other soldiers, all but abandoned and at the mercy of the enemy. He managed to escape, was reunited with his family and returned to Paris a few days later.

On June 17, Marshal Pétain announced that “the fighting must stop”, and on June 22, the armistice was signed at Rethondes. In Paris, however, the end of the bombing did not mean that their troubles were over. The Jews were increasingly threatened. Léon could still not find a job.

“Jews were forbidden to hold public office or to work in independent professions. In industrial and commercial firms, Aryan administrators were appointed who became the de facto managers of Jewish property. Jewish stores and boutiques were required to display signs stating their Jewish identity”. Rose’s parents got by doing small sewing jobs. Léon refused to work for the Nazis. He had no desire to run after the German “Golden Calf” and make clothes for the Kommandantur. He sometimes went back to Bressuire to buy potatoes, butter and vegetables, because the prices on the black market were beyond his means.

In chapter 8 of his Memoirs, Léon recounts how he had to go to the local police department and register himself as a Jew. On May 13, 1941, two police officers came to see him and gave him a green card, summoning him to report to the Levallois-Perret police department, accompanied by a family member, at 8 a.m. the following day. The summons threatened “severe sanctions” if he failed to appear.

After a lengthy discussion with the family, Léon decided to comply with the summons. On May 14, Léon and Guitlè went to the police department leaving little Rosa in bed. A Gestapo agent took their papers and demanded that Guitlè go to get a suitcase and some food for her husband. Guitlè did as she was told. She brought back her daughter, who had woken up by then, with her. Then came the terrible separation.

“All the other women were there too, with their suitcases, and an unbearable spectacle unfolded before our eyes. The women and children threw themselves into the men’s arms, screaming and crying desperately. The police forcibly separated them, tearing the children from their fathers’ arms. My little Rosa, she too took my hand and would not let go. ‘Come on, Daddy, let’s go home,’ she said, ‘and you can buy me a new toy…’.” Taken from chapter 8 of Léon Grynberg’s Memoirs.

The 3,710 men arrested at the various assembly points in Paris were transferred to the Austerlitz train station ready to be interned in the Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande camps. Four convoys of passenger wagons were organized: two of them taking 2,140 men to the Beaune-la-Rolande camp and the other two taking 1,570 men to the Pithiviers camp. The convoys arrived at the camps on the afternoon of May 14. (Source: Shoah Memorial, Paris)

How Léon found out what had happened to his family when he returned to France

This section was written by Charmaine E.

“This project revealed the sad and heartbreaking violence inflicted on the Jews. I was deeply moved as I read the records about little Rosa, especially the missing person’s certificate. I could sense how Léon was losing hope of finding his family.” Charmaine E.

After a spell in the Beaune-La-Rolande camp in 1941, Léon was deported to Auschwitz on Convoy no. 5. According to the French Defense Historical Service, he was held there until October 8, 1943, when he was transferred to Warsaw until June 1944. He was then sent to Dachau and finally to Mühldorf, where he remained until the end of the war. When he returned to Paris, he hoped to rejoin his family.

He went to his apartment building in Levallois-Perret, but there were strangers living there. They sent to him the floor where his neighbors, the Flageollet family, lived. Mrs. Flageollet, when she saw the state Léon was in, did not feel able to tell him the truth. Léon then went to see his sister-in-law Mania, but she was also too distraught to speak to him. It seems he only found out some time later that his brother, Moshe, was dead. Increasingly worried, he decided to go back to see Mrs. Flageollet, who finally agreed to tell him the truth. She said that she had heard that the police had come to arrest Rosa and Guitlè at dawn on July 16, 1942. They were taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver and then interned in the same camp as he had been in, in Beaune-La-Rolande. His wife had then been deported to Auschwitz, while his daughter had been placed in the care of the UGIF (Union Générale des Israelites de France, or General Union of French Jews). He hurried to the UGIF head office, where a man told him that Rosa had been deported on July 31, 1944. He did not mention, in his Memoirs, the date on which he found this out.

In 1951, when he was living in the Cantal department of France, still devastated, he wrote a poem for Rosa. It is featured at the start of his Memoirs, which were published by his second wife Ester Grynberg and his adopted daughter Renée. The records show that Léon had applied for French citizenship for his daughter, but it was refused on November 20, 1972. This was because when Rosa was born, he did not have a residence permit that was valid for more than a year, which was a requirement of a decree dated November 12, 1938.

Léon Grynberg’s poem for his daughter, copied out and illustrated by Romy D.

The Lutétia Hotel in Paris

The Lutétia Hotel. Source: Wikipedia

 

The Lutétia hotel, near Saint-Germain-des-Près in the Notre-Dame-des-Champs area of the 6th district of Paris, was built in 1910 and was initially requisitioned by the Nazis. After the Liberation, it was used as a reception center for deportees returning from the camps. During that time, some 18,000 people, including Léon, spent time there. The survivors were often in a pitiful state.
According to Henri Mosewicz’s testimony, Léon suffered from the after-effects of the deportation for the rest of his life. He often had nightmares: he would wake up with a start, stand up on his bed and relive the endless morning roll calls in the camp, during which he had to call out his number.

Witness accounts of the arrest on July 16, 1942

On July 21, 1953, Léon began the procedure to have the French government grant Rosa the status of political deportee, meaning that she had been deported on political grounds. The next step was to prove that Rosa was one of the many “deportees who had never returned”: on April 22, 1954, Léon applied to have her civil status updated. This initiative failed the first-time round: the police, who had to carry out an investigation, claimed to have found no trace of the family ever having lived at 16 rue Carnot in Levallois! Léon persevered, however, and secured witness statements from two neighbors. Mrs. Flageollet testified that the address was correct and that the family had indeed been arrested on July 16, 1942. Of course, Léon was proved right.

Marguerite Flageollet’s testimony, dated January 3, 1951

 

The second roundup. Guitlè and Rosa were victims of the Vel d’Hiv roundup (July 16, 1942)

This section was written by Marc D.

“I could picture in my mind’s eye the terrible scenes that took place during the Vél’d’hiv roundup, which Rosa must have found so upsetting and frightening when she was just three years old”. Marc D.

As Léon had already been arrested and deported, we have no personal accounts of what happened to Rosa and her mother. However, we do have proof that the two women were victims of the worst anti-Semitic roundup in Western Europe, that of the “Vel d’Hiv” (winter cycling track) in Paris: their neighbor, Mrs. Flageollet, watched helplessly as they were arrested, and testified to this after France was liberated.

Buses arriving at the Velodrome d’Hiver.
Source: Laurent Joly

 In his Memoirs, Léon recounts how the arrest unfolded at their home at 16 rue Carnot in Levallois.

“At dawn on July 16, 1942, a black car pulled up in front of our building. Some French policemen got out and started banging hard on the door.
“At dawn on July 16, 1942, a black car pulled up in front of our building. Some French policemen got out and started banging hard on the door. My wife, who was jolted awake, opened the window and yelled “Help!” but at that time of the morning, the neighbors were still asleep and all their shutters were closed. Distraught by the shouting and seeing the policemen in uniform, who reminded her of the ones who had separated us before, my little Rosa fled and ran away to seek refuge with the Flageollet family.” The child cried and struggled, but nevertheless, the policeman dragged her away.

Rosa and Guitlè were initially taken to the local police department along with some other Jewish families. A bus then took them to the Velodrome d’Hiver in the 15th district of Paris.

It was a long day. Stuck there with numerous other families, Rosa and Guitlè huddled together. When night fell, it was horrible: there was so much anguish, so many tears… There were no mattresses, so everyone had to sleep on the floor. The heat was stifling. Guitlè and Rosa must have been so scared.

In two days, more than 12,800 people were arrested, 4,115 of them children!

The German authorities tried to cover up their wrongdoing. They used 50 buses in all to ferry around 7,000 Jews to the Vélodrome d’Hiver in the 15th district of Paris. The photograph above was taken by an unknown photographer from the Paris-Midi newspaper.

Rosa and her mother were sent to the Beaune-la-Rolande camp

This section was written by Jaimie-Lyne A.L.

“I was struck by the fact that this one little girl, like millions of others, was separated from her parents so abruptly and then met her death alone. These days, we often complain about the smallest of things, without realizing that these are really minor problems.” Jaimie-Lyne A.L.

Beaune-la-Rolande was a large internment and transit camp in the Loiret department of France. Pithiviers camp was in the same department.

A French military policeman keeping watch over the Beaune-la-Rolande camp. Source: Shoah Memorial

When Rosa’s mother disappeared

This happened when Guitlè was deported to Poland. Her name is on the deportation list of Convoy 16, which set off from Pithiviers station on August 7, 1942. This suggests that Guitlè had been transferred to Pithiviers beforehand. Guitlé and Rosa were rounded up on the same day as Ruchla and Fanny Rotsztejn, the wife and daughter of Guitlé’s brother Szmul. The two women were deported on different convoys, however.

Rosa was sick at the time

Rosa had been separated from her mother because she fell sick in the camp. She had been taken to hospital suffering from a contagious disease. At such a young age, she must have felt very sad, lonely and abandoned. Rosa was then placed in the care of the UGIF, which was responsible for taking care of Jewish deportees’ children. According to Léon Grynberg, Mrs. Flageollet applied for custody of her, but the UGIF refused on the pretext that she already had a son of her own to look after.

The barracks at Beaune-la- Rolande in 1942. Source: Loiret departmental archives

 

Rosa stayed in the UGIF children’s home in Louveciennes

This section was written by Stella V.

“I was deeply moved by Rosa’s sad story, the fact that this poor little girl, so young, so sweet and so innocent, had her life turned upside down forever. In difficult times like ours, it serves as a warning against violence and anti-Semitism.” Stella V.

When she left hospital, Rosa was placed in the care of the UGIF, which sent her to several different children’s homes. She was in the home in Neuilly, for example, until August 25, 1943, when she was moved to Louveciennes. During our visit to the Shoah Memorial, we found evidence of this in the homes’ entry and exit logs.

Louveciennes is a small town to the west of Paris, with woods and a lake, not far from our school. In 1911, it had a population of barely a thousand. The children’s home moved several times. At first, it was called the Séjour de Voisins, located at 1 place Dreux. A large house with a huge garden full of plants and trees, it had previously been used as an agricultural orphanage.

Then, in the summer of 1944, the children’s home was moved to 18 rue de la Paix, a smaller house where the group photograph below was taken. The children are pictured with their supervisor, Denise Holstein. She was only 17 years old herself, but day and night she cared for a dozen or so children between the ages of 5 and 8, most of whom, like Rosa, did not go to school.

Denise Holstein and the other supervisors try to keep the poor children occupied, so that they focused on something other than their sad situation. They went for walks, sang songs and played countless games.

This approach worked well most of the time, but at bedtime, according to Denise, the children would cry and call out to their parents. One of them once even called Denise “Mommy”. Rosa probably missed her parents dreadfully.

According to the local paper, La Tribune de Louveciennes, this building, known as Séjour de Voisins, was an orphanage prior to the First World War. Nowadays, the building, which has been divided into three residential units, is hidden by trees and shrubs. Source: Old postcard, Tribune de Louveciennes

Denise Holstein on the right, with the children she cared for. Front row, left to right: Jeannette Goldmann and Samuel Przemisliawski. 2^nd row, Régine Rein, Marie-Anne Vexler and Estelle Jakubowitz. Back row, Claude-Renée Vexler, twins Jeannette and Paulette Sklarz and Rosa Grynberg. Source: Denise Holstein/Shoah Memorial

According to Denise Holstein, this large house at 18 rue de la Paix was too cramped to house all the children. Not far from the Séjour de Voisins, the railway line ran along the bottom of the garden.
Source: Denise Holstein

The third roundup. Rosa was a victim of the roundup in Louveciennes on July 22, 1944

This section was written by Romy D.

“I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to take part in the ceremonies on April 28 and May 8., during which I was able to explain our project. I’m very grateful to my teacher, without whom this project would never have been possible, and to Rosa Grynberg’s family, whom I’ll never forget.” Romy D.

In his memoirs, Léon Grynberg says that the UGIF gave the Germans lists of all the children it was intended to protect.

Arrest at dawn

Thanks to Denise Holstein’s account, we discovered that everyone was amazed to see “a German officer and several civilians wearing the yellow star”. Denise and the other supervisors had to get the children dressed in a hurry. “The children, all in a daze, didn’t understand a thing, so we comforted them with the promise of a nice bus ride (…) We all sang on the journey”.

Songs to forget what was happening

The bus took them to Drancy internment camp. Rosa spent a few days there. Drancy camp was a group of 1930s housing blocks surrounded by barbed wire fences. No visitors were allowed, sanitation was poor and there was little food: life was hard. Denise “did not have time to worry”: the children “clung to her like never before”.

Drancy in 1941 (Source: German Federal archives/Wikipedia)

Aloïs Brunner had been in charge of Drancy camp since 1943

Aloïs Brunner was born in Hungary on April 8, 1912. He was an SS officer and was responsible for the deaths of 24,000 Jews in France. After the war, he was one of the most wanted Nazi criminals. He was sentenced in France, in absentia, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2001. He died in Damascus in either 2001 or 2010. Rosa was one of 70,000 prisoners who passed through Drancy between 1941 and 1944, prior to being deported.

Convoy 77 and Auschwitz, little Rosa’s final days

This section was written by Caspar M.

“I very much enjoyed speaking with Rosa’s nieces, Stéphanie and Emmanuelle, who worked with my group during our visit to the Shoah Memorial. We even saw a photo of Léon with Stéphanie in a stroller.” Caspar M.

Having been separated from her family for several months, Rosa was deported on the last major convoy from Drancy to Auschwitz. A total of 986 men and women, along with 324 children, were taken to the killing center in Poland.

On July 31, 1944, Rosa was loaded into a cattle car with her friends from the Louveciennes children’s home. Her supervisor, Denise, survived and later testified to what happened.

Rosa was surrounded by strangers, all crammed in together in appalling conditions. Everyone in the car suffered from the lack of space, sanitation and food. Many of the children cried on the journey.

When the train arrived at Auschwitz on August 3, 1944, Rosa was separated from her supervisor, Denise. She found herself abandoned with hundreds of other children on the platform. Denise had heeded the advice of a prisoner who had told her to “let go of the children’s hands”. As a result, during the selection process, she was sent to join the line of people who were taken to the concentration camp.

The others, including Rosa, were sent straight to the gas chambers. Denise Holstein recounts seeing a little girl who had lost some of her belongings on the way. She “didn’t [even] have her shoes on and was crying, so she went barefoot into the gas chamber”.

As the children were too weak and unable to do any physical work, the Nazis sent them to their deaths immediately. And so it was that young Rosa Grynberg’s life came to a tragic end when she was just 5 years old, on August 3, 1944.

This photograph shows a convoy of Hungarian Jews arriving in June 1944. The Nazis are carrying out of the selection process on the platform, with the men lining up for the labor camp and the mothers and children destined to die. Denise Holstein described a similar scene.
Source: Yad Vashem (photo from the Auschwitz album)

Photograph taken by the Allied Air Force. The railroad tracks and barracks are clearly visible. The Birkenau gas chamber was bombed during the attack on the IG Farben factory on September 13, 1944. Source: Defense Intelligence Agency/Yad Vashem

Leaving Auschwitz on June 27, 1945. When the Red Army liberated Auschwitz Birkenau, it found around 7,000 survivors, most of them sick. Before they left, the Nazis shot 200 Jewish women and destroyed the crematorium ovens.
Source: German Federal archives

Our last witness. At the age of 97, Denise Holstein is the last person alive to have known Rosa

This section was written by Channelle D.

“I was deeply moved by the fact that millions of children were never able to make a life for themselves. I shall never forget.” Channelle D.

During the summer of 1945, after she came back to France, Denise Holstein wrote down her experiences, but did not discuss them with anyone else. It was only in 1990, when she met Serge Klarsfeld, that she decided to speak out. From then on, for over twenty years, she visited many French schools and contributed to several documentaries.

We would have very much liked to speak with her, but unfortunately, she is very frail and no longer up to it. We therefore decided instead to write about her life, based mainly on this video testimonial (in French).

As a teenager, she spent her time with her parents, Bernard Holstein and Juliette Cohen. She was educated at the Corneille and Jeanne-d’Arc high schools in Rouen.

The Cayeux-sur-Mer Manuscript July-August 1945. Denise Holstein’s memoirs.

 

On the evening of January 15, 1943, during the Rouen round-up, Denise and her family were arrested at their home and then interned at Drancy. Denise fell sick and was taken to hospital, and while she was there her parents were deported on Convoy 62: she would never see them again.

Denise thus found herself alone and unwell. “I don’t know where we’ll be for your 17th birthday, but I promise you, for your 18th, we’ll have a great party,” her father had promised her. It was a vow he was unable to keep.

Denise was released from Drancy into the care of the UGIF. At the age of 17, they placed her in Louveciennes children’s home, where she became a supervisor for a group of children whose parents had also been deported.

It was there that she met the young Rosa, such a sweet little girl. Denise does not mention Rosa by name in her book. Her memories were presumably too painful to rise to the surface. There were also another 34 children in the home.

On July 31, 1944, Denise and the children were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Denise was selected to enter the camp for forced labor. Sometime later, Denise caught scarlet fever and suffered terrible ordeals – a real nightmare. She was liberated from the camps in April 1945. She waited many years before she felt able to testify, which she did for “people who had never experienced the camps and could not understand”.

Denise also wrote a book called Je ne vous oublierai jamais, mes enfants d’Auschwitz, (I will never forget you, my children of Auschwitz) which was published in 1995.

Rosa was a victim of genocide. Children during the Holocaust: little people who were systematically exterminated in the death camps

This section was written by Aja N.S.

“I was upset when I learned about what happened to Jewish children during the Holocaust. Discovering that teenagers like me suffered and died at such a young age was a real shock. It’s an important lesson for all of us. »

The Shoah, or the Holocaust, refers to the killing of some 6 million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the Second World War. The word Shoah means “catastrophe” in Hebrew. The Nazis systematically deported and murdered Jews in killing centers, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec and Chelmno..

Some 11,400 Jewish children were deported from France between 1942 and 1944. During the Vél d’Hiv roundup, which took place on July 16 and 17, 1942, nearly a third of the 13,000 people arrested were children, who were then held in appallingly unhygienic conditions.

Children deported to the camps under the age of 12, such as Rosa, were far less likely to survive, as they were too young to be used for forced labor. From this point of view, they were a cost to the Nazi regime. This is why they were among the first to be exterminated.

Children in the ghetto at Kovno (now Kaunas) in Lithuania, photo taken between 1941 and 1943. Source: US Holocaust Memorial Museum

During the Holocaust, children died in a range of circumstances: the vast majority died in the ghettos due to a shortage of food, sanitation and healthcare. They lived in atrocious conditions. Other children were the victims of medical experiments. This was especially true of twins.

The Nazis, who claimed that the “Aryan race” was superior to other populations, also killed gypsy and Roma children. They also started killing disabled children as early as 1938. The Nazi regime refused to tolerate diversity of any kind.

Towards the end of the Second World War, children such as Rosa were usually sent straight to the gas chambers as soon as they arrived in a camp.
One such example is that of Anne Frank, who went into hiding before eventually being found and deported. She was a Jewish teenager who was born in Frankfurt on June 12, 1929. Like Rosa, Anne Frank experienced anti-Semitism from an early age: she had to wear a yellow star, go to a school specifically for Jewish children, and live in constant fear. To escape persecution, her family moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 1933. However, Germany invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940. From July 1942 onwards, she and her family hid in a secret apartment in a building adjoining her father’s business. For two years, Anne kept a diary in which she described everything that happened. Her family was then reported. Seven months after she was arrested, Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany. Her father published her diary after the war.

The road back to our school, as a way of bidding goodbye