Serge BLUMBERG

Source: © photo belonging to Lionel Levha, Madeleine Blumberg’s son

Serge Blumberg was born on July 17, 1930 in the 18th district of Paris.

His parents were Rose Blumberg, who was born in 1896 in Constantinople, Turkey, but whose mother was born in Ukraine, and Ibersz, known as Armand, Blumberg, a Jewish tailor who was born in 1895 in Warsaw, Poland. Serge was their fourth child and their second son.

From the ten-year tables of births in the 18th district of Paris
Serge Blumberg © City of Paris digitized archives

Serge’s father, Armand, and his mother, Rose
© Photos belonging to Lionel Levha, Madeleine Blumberg’s son

Armand was naturalized as a French citizen at the same time as his wife and children, on March 6, 1929, in Paris. Serge, who was born after they were naturalized, was declared French by birth, as he was born in France to a French father. The Drancy camp records later referred to him as “French by origin” (noted as “F.O.” on his internment record).

Certificate of French nationality
Serge Blumberg © Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the French Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, Dossier n°21P 247 294 74929

Serge had two older sisters: Anna, who was born in 1922 and Madeleine, born in 1926, and one older brother, André, born in 1928.

Anna and Madeleine / André
Photos belonging to Lionel Levha, Madeleine Blumberg’s son

Besides his older sisters and older brother, Serge also had a younger sister, Simone, who was born in 1932 and was kept in hiding from 1943 until the end of the war. He also had a younger brother, Alain Louis, born in July 1944.

Simone and Serge Blumberg
Photo belonging to Lionel Levha, Madeleine Blumberg’s son

Alain Louis
The only member of the family of whom we have no photos, because Alain was born in Drancy camp and murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was just two weeks old.

Serge, like his brother André, went to school on Rue Charles Hermite in the 18th district of Paris, not far from the Porte d’Aubervilliers and the family home at 48 Rue Charles-Lauth, and then to another school on Rue de la Guadeloupe, near Rue de la Chapelle.

According his sister Madeleine, who shared her memories with her son Lionel Levha, the children had a happy childhood despite their father being quite strict.

In late 1943, when life Paris became too difficult, the parents decided to send the two younger children, Serge and Simone, to stay with a Mrs. Boulland and a Miss Simon on a farm in the Loiret department of France. However, in January 1944, financial constraints and a heavy workload left the two women with no choice but to send Serge back to Paris. Simone continued to live in hiding on the farm until the end of the war.

Serge was 14 years old in 1944.

The arrest

The Gestapo arrested the family in their apartment on rue Charles Lauth at around 1 a.m. on the night of July 7-8, 1944. The Nazis arrived in large numbers, blocked the exits, and used their car headlights to light up the facades and courtyards of the buildings.

Their neighbors, the Grinberg family, including Esther Grinberg, were arrested as the same time. The circumstances surrounding the arrest (which took place as a result of “a deliberate or unintentional tip-off by someone else who lived in the building”) are described in a record in our biography of Serge’s father, Armand Ybersz Blumberg. It should also be noted, however, that both families had registered themselves as Jewish, so the authorities would have already known where they lived.

Serge was taken away with his father, Armand, his pregnant mother, Rose, and three of his siblings, Anna, André and Madeleine. They were then interned in Drancy camp, north of Paris, where they remained for 23 days.

His mother gave birth to a baby boy, Alain Louis, in Drancy camp on July 17. It was Serge’s 14th birthday. When he arrived in Drancy, Serge was assigned the prisoner number 24.954. He was then sent, along with his brother, André, to room 4 on staircase 18. Their playmate and neighbor, Maurice Grinberg, was in the same room.

Deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau

On July 31, 1944, the Blumberg family was deported on Convoy 77 to Auschwitz-Birkenau. They carried the baby, Alain-Louis, in a little box lined with muslin.

When the convoy arrived in Auschwitz on the night of August 3-4, Anna, Madeleine, André, and their father Armand were selected to enter the camp to work.

At the age of just 14, Serge would normally have been sent straight to the gas chambers. However, as was the case with a few other teenage boys from other convoys, he too was selected to work in the camp.

Serge was assigned prisoner number B.3701, which was close to his those of his brother André, (B.3697), and his father, (B. 3698). His father must therefore have known that knew that his sons had been selected to work in the camp. However, family members were often separated soon after they arrived. After they had their numbers tattooed on their arms, Armand may have lost contact with one or both of this sons, especially as new convoys of deportees from Europe were arriving all the time.

Convoy 77 deportation list
Serge Blumberg © Shoah Memorial, Paris

The Sachsenhausen camp

The next record we have or Serge is in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near Orianenburg, some 19 miles north of Berlin, Germany. He was there between December 17 and 23, 1944 and his prisoner number was 118103 (number 30 on the sheet). He had arrived there on November 27, 1944, along with 15 other deportees, all under the age of 18.

During his time in Sachsenhausen, he worked as a “Maurerlehrlin”, which means “apprentice mason” or “apprentice bricklayer”.

At the time, Anton Kaindl, an SS-Obersturmbannführer who later became an SS-Standartenführer, was in charge of the camp, which had more than a hundred satellite camps, or “Kommandos”. One of them produced counterfeit money and some Jewish prisoners, who had probably been goldsmiths or jewelers before they were arrested, worked there.

Serge was declared dead in the Sachsenhausen camp on February 1, 1945. There are no details of how he died, but the camp and Kommandos were notoriously tough[1]. His name is inscribed on a memorial plaque on the camp’s outer wall, which was unveiled by the Serge and Beate Klarsfeld in 2015.

Sachsenhausen concentration camp arrival list, May 1944 – April 1945, DocID: 4095470,
Serge Blumberg © Arolsen Archives

After the war

Serge’s father, Armand, who survived his time in the camps, applied to have him recognized as a Political deportee and to have him declared dead. As he himself had been deported, he knew that his sons had been held in the Auschwitz camp to work but also had to provide details about what had become of them. At the time, however, it was not known where or when Serge had died, which meant that the procedure was both long and complicated.

A certificate confirming that Serge had gone missing was issued on November 29, 1951.

On October 5, 1954, Serge was officially recognized as a “Political deportee,” which confirmed that he had been arrested for political reasons, i.e. according the anti-Jewish policies implemented jointly by the Nazi occupiers and the Vichy regime. That same day, Armand received a blue “Political deportee” card in his son’s name.

On April 5, 1955, Armand received, a “compensation payment” of 12,000 francs for the loss of his son. This took into account the time Serge had spent interned in Drancy (July 7–30, 1944) and as a deportee (July 31–August 5). At the time, it had not yet been confirmed that Serge had also spent time Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen, nor that he had undergone such a harrowing ordeal, and ultimately died in unknown circumstances.

Lastly, on May 16, 1958, fourteen years after Serge died, Armand secured a court ruling officially declaring him dead. As he was born in France, he was entitled to have the words, “Died for France” added to his death certificate. This was done at the town hall of the 18th district of Paris on November 24, 1958.

In 2015, the nonprofit association FFDJF (Les Fils et Filles de Déportés Juifs de France or The Sons and Daughters of Jews deported from France) compiled a list of the 16 young boys who lost their lives in the Sachsenhausen camp. Three of them were deported on Convoy 77: Gérald Idzkowski, who was 17, and Joseph Tabak, who, like Serge, was just 14 years old.

Confirmation of the decision to grant Serge “Political deportee” status
Serge Blumberg © Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the French Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, Dossier n°21P 247 294 74929

Court ruling declaring Serge dead
Serge Blumberg © Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the French Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, Dossier n°21P 247 294 74929

Notice of “compensation” payment
Serge Blumberg © Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the French Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, Dossier n°21P 247 294 74929

 

We would like to thank Mr. Lionel Levha, Madeleine Blumberg’s son, for sharing the Blumberg family’s memories with us and for allowing us to publish the family photographs.

We would also like to thank Muriel Baude, a teacher at St Charles High School in St Pierre, Réunion, who began working on this biography in 2018, and a group of 12th-grade students from Camille Guérin High School in Poitiers who also contributed to the research.

[1] Information on Serge Blumberg that Serge Klarsfeld obtained from the Sachsenhausen Memorial in June 2014.