Georges Loinger on creative ways of saving Jews from Nazis
He needed to be clever as well as courageous
An athlete living in Vichy France and using a position as a physical education instructor as a cover, Georges Loinger worked with the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, a group founded in Russia in 1912 to help Jews in need, which had moved to Berlin and then to France. They saved 5,000 Jewish children, mostly the children of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. The stories appear in a profile of Loinger on his 107th birthday in Tablet.
“One day [Loinger says] after the war entered France and it was understood it was dangerous for the children to stay in these houses, we started to hide them with Catholic French families. I took the children to the border of France with Switzerland, next to Geneva, and told them we are going to play with a ball like we used to do.
“I threw the ball a hundred meters toward the Swiss border and told the children to run and get the ball. They ran after the ball and this is how they crossed the border. This is how their lives were saved.”
Loinger told his plans to the mayor of a town, Annemasse, on the Swiss border and just five miles from Geneva. The mayor agreed to house the children until Loinger could get them over the border. Jean Deffaugt was later declared “Righteous Among the Gentiles” by Vad Hashem.
One of Loinger’s schemes took place in a cemetery whose wall abutted the French side. He had people arrive at the cemetery wearing black veils and carrying wreaths while they prayed and wept. With the help of a gravedigger’s ladder, the “mourners” would climb over a wall and find themselves within feet of the Swiss border.
Loinger paid professional guides to pilot them over the border. They moved the children in groups of five to seven. Loinger helped them cross, sometimes carrying the smaller children on his back.
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