Figure of the Resistance, Georges Loinger saved hundreds of Jewish children during the Occupation. He subsequently worked to facilitate the passage of Nazism survivors in Palestine aboard the Exodus. Dean of the Jewish Resistance in France, commander of the Legion of Honor, Croix de Guerre 1939-1945, Georges Loinger passed away on December 28, 2018 at the age of 108.
Shoah Memorial / J-M Lebaz
Born to Jewish merchant parents in Strasbourg in 1910, while Alsace remained German until 1918, Georges Loinger was partly raised by the mother of the future mime Marceau, Anna Mangel, his father being mobilized in the Austrian army during the first world war. As a young athlete, he was strongly influenced by his activities within Hatikvah ("hope" in Hebrew), a youth movement similar to that of the scouts, and inspired by Zionism. There he meets Flore, whom he marries in 1934, and rub shoulders with many German Jews who are well informed about the evolution of the Third Reich.
During his engineering studies in Strasbourg, he became friends with Dr. Joseph Weill, "one of the most cultured men in France," convinced of the need to prepare himself to resist the Nazi persecutions that he foresaw. On his advice, Georges became a physical education teacher in Paris, then at the Maimonide high school in Boulogne-Billancourt, of which he was also deputy director. He meets the Baroness de Rothschild, who entrusts to Flore, in her castle of Lagny, close to Paris, the care of 123 children of German jews, far from the Reich in 1938. Georges, he is mobilized in Alsace in 1939, then taken prisoner and sent to a camp in Bavaria. Worried about the news coming from France, he escapes.
He joins his wife and the children she is protecting, taken to a former hotel in La Bourboule, near Clermont-Ferrand. In liaison with Dr. Weill, who became one of the leaders of the OSE (Work of Relief to Jewish Children), Georges takes care of dispersing these children in the Creuse. When, in 1942, the Germans occupied the southern zone, he was instructed by the OSE to create a route towards Switzerland. With the active support of the mayor of Annemasse, Jean Deffaugt, local railway workers and the Joint, an American Jewish relief organization, he evacuated several hundred children, including his two own, to Helvetic land. Between 1943 and 1944, he will then save more than four hundred Jewish children.
“The exact number, I never knew. The OSE tells me several hundred. You know, none of my comrades thought about the post-war. For us, the post-war was a myth that existed in our wishes, in our dreams. But we were at the front, in constant danger," said Georges Loinger. Historians estimate, however, that he helped save about 450 children.
After the Liberation, he participated in the organization of illegal immigration of Jews to Palestine, then under British mandate, notably on board the Exodus. He creates the subsidiary of an Israeli shipping company in Paris, which he manages until his retirement. President of the Association of former deportees of the Jewish resistance in France, Georges Loinger coordinated, with Jean Brauman and Frida Wattenberg, a collection of more than 500 testimonies, entitled Organisation juive de combat – Résistance/sauvetage en France, 1940-1945 (Editions Autrement, 2002).
Georges Loinger will receive the insignia of Commander of the Legion of Honor in 2005 and will be received in 2013 by Israeli President Shimon Peres during a trip to Israel. Georges Loinger told his story in several books. He testified several times at the Shoah Memorial, we suggest you review these meetings in video below.
All our thoughts go to his loved ones.
Georges Loinger, the Alsatian children’s smuggler
Georges Loinger: educate and save through sport (November 27, 2011)
