Zelda MENASCE or MENASSE (1917-2009)

“Secrets of the archives” workshop at the Shoah Memorial in Paris

On Tuesday May 7, the 9th grade students from class 3e3 at the Apollinaire secondary school in Paris took part in a workshop at the Shoah Memorial. This gave them the opportunity to explore the history of the documentation center at the Memorial and to better understand the scope of its resources, using census forms, the Drancy transfer book and an extract from the Ardennes departmental archives. They were also able to fill in some gaps in the life stories of Zelda Menasce and Charles Menache, both of whom were deported on Convoy 77 on July 31, 1944, and on whose biographies the students have been working since the beginning of the year. They now know, for instance, that Zelda had been living on rue de la Convention since 1940, whereas Charles was not mentioned in the 1940 or 1941 censuses of Jews in Paris, so was not yet living in the 15th district, which confirms our previous findings. They also found out exactly where in Drancy the two cousins were interned, and that the Germans had confiscated Charles’s family’s property in Sedan. The students also found their names on the Wall of Names. A further visit to the Shoah Memorial is planned for June.

Ms. Chabaud and Ms. Séné.

Zelda Menasce

Zelda Menasce was born in Constantinople on either September 12 (according to the archives[1]) or July 12 (Zelda’s letter[2]), 1917. Her parents were Moïse Menasce, who was born either in Cairo in Egypt or in Varna in Bulgaria in August 1880 and died in 1934, and Elise Alcalay, who was born in Bulgaria in 1885 and died in 1950. The archives held by the French consulate in Istanbul list a Moïse Ménaché who moved to France in 1923 with his wife and two children. Was this him or might it have been be someone else with the same name? Zelda had one brother, Victor, who was born in Cairo in 1912 and died in 1948, and two sisters, Mathilde, who was born in Cairo in 1910, and Béki-Henriette, who was born in Constantinople in 1914 or 1915 and died in 1998.

The family lived at various addresses in Bois-Colombes, near Paris, from 1923 until 1946, according to the local census records[3]. There she met up with some cousins by the name of Alcalay. The family members were all naturalized as French citizens on June 12, 1928 (French Official Gazette dated June 24, 1928). Zelda, who was a good student, went to elementary school in Bois-Colombes, including the Paul Bert girls’ school from October 1923 to April 1925, and later went on to learn typing. We then lose track of her until 1940 (Jewish census records) by which time she was living at 71 rue de la Convention in the 15th district of Paris. She was single, had no children and was working as a secretary at Robe de Sport on rue Feydeau in the 2nd district.

The French police arrested Zelda and her cousin on Place de la Bourse, while they were chatting about their respective families. According to the records, they were arrested either for not wearing the yellow star, or for removing the word “Jew” from their identity cards. They were first taken to the police department, and later that same evening transferred to the Drancy internment camp, where they were allocated their “accommodation” on stairway 18. Zelda Menasce was assigned number 25104. The living conditions in the camp were tough: sanitary facilities were poor, there was very little to eat and nothing to do other than wander around the courtyard. She was told she was going to be sent to Theresienstadt to work in a shoe factory.

On July 31, 1944, she boarded a train bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she arrived on August 5: this was Convoy 77. She later said that it was impossible to sit down, and that the stench was appalling for four days and three nights.

As soon as she arrived, during the selection process, she lost sight of her cousin. She never found out what happened to him, according to an interview with another cousin, Jean-Marc Alcalay[5]. She was taken to the Birkenau camp where first she had to take a shower and get undressed. She was then shaved and tattooed. Her number was A-16770; A for the name of the camp, lager A. 183 women were selected to work and their numbers ranged from A-16652 to A-16834. Zelda described the conditions there as appalling. She had hardly anything to eat: one bowl for five people, no forks or spoons, watery soup or bread with margarine and no fresh water. The women begged for or stole food. The sanitary standards were deplorable: no soap and no towels. She slept in a barrack block with 300 or so other women, all crammed into bunk beds with no mattresses.

She had to work until she was exhausted: carrying drums of soup, digging up rocks from the banks of the Vistula river and filling wagons, weaving rubber mats to protect the cannons and often being beaten (an SS guard hit her with a rifle butt, leaving her deaf in one ear). She also had to watch people she had grown close to being selected to go to the gas chambers, or dying of diseases or exhaustion. She had to endure endless roll-calls, night and day, often in the rain and cold.

In October 1944, when she was sick with scarlet fever, she was taken to the infirmary, the “revier“, where she spent forty days left untreated.

She was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, willingly she later said, in January 1945. The camp was already overcrowded and there was hardly anything to eat. British troops liberated the camp on April 15, 1945. Sick with dysentery and typhus and weighing only around 66 pounds (30 kg), she was cared for in the camp hospital. She was evacuated to Soltan on May 17 and then flown back to Paris by the Red Cross on June 4, 1945. Zelda was one of 209 survivors, including 141 women. Her cousin, who she was with when she was arrested, never made it back, and nor did one of her mother’s sisters.

After spending time in the Salpétrière hospital and the Pasteur Institute, she was finally reunited with her family in Bois-Colombes. She went back to work in September 1945, albeit still suffering from the after-effects of having been deported. She has held a “political deportee” card since 1955. She lived at 1 allée Marie Laurent in the 20th district of Paris.

She married Paul-Robert Ostoya Kinderfreund ( a journalist, botanist and ex-resistance member, 1904-1969) in 1968. The couple never had children. After her husband died, she left Paris and moved to Nice, on the south coast of France. She went on to give talks in schools, and also took part in official ceremonies and reunions of former deportees. She was vice-president of the Alpes Maritimes section of the French Fédération nationale des déportés et internés résistants et patriotes (National federation of deportees and internees who were resistance fighters and patriots).

Zelda Menasce died on January 6, 2009. Her name is inscribed on the Wall of Names at the Shoah Memorial in Paris.

Zelda Menasce, Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the Ministry of Defense Historical Service, copyright_6620

 

Photo taken by Axelle Séné, class History and Geography teacher, in May 2024.

 

Sources

[1] Records provided by the Convoy 77 non-profit organization (digitized archives from the Victims of Contemporary Conflicts Archives Division of the French Ministry of Defense Historical Service, in Caen, Normandy)

[2] Personal records kindly provided by Mr. J.M. Alcalay.

[3] Hauts de Seine departmental archives: 1D NUM BOC 1926, 1931, 1936, 1946 et 2506W NUM 3

[4] Bad Arolsen archives

[5] Interview published in Le Mouvement N°98, in June 2001.