A figure of the Resistance, Georges Loinger saved hundreds of Jewish children during the Occupation. He then worked to facilitate the passage of survivors of Nazism in Palestine on board 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 28 December 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 an athletic teenager, 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 met Flore, whom he married in 1934, and met many German Jews who were well informed about the evolution of the Third Reich.
During his engineering studies in Strasbourg, he became acquainted 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 Lycée Maimonide de Boulogne-Billancourt, of which he was also deputy director. He met the Baroness de Rothschild, who entrusted to Flore, in her castle of Lagny, near Paris, the care of 123 children of German Jews, far from the Reich in 1938. Georges was mobilized in Alsace in 1939, then taken prisoner and sent to a camp in Bavaria. Worried about news from France, he escapes.
He joined his wife and the children she was protecting, taken to an old hotel in La Bourboule, near Clermont-Ferrand. In liaison with Dr. Weill, who had become one of the leaders of the OSE (Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants juifs), Georges took care of dispersing these children in the Creuse. When, in 1942, the Germans occupied the southern zone, he was charged by the OSE to create a pipeline to 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 Swiss soil. Between 1943 and 1944, he went on to save more than four hundred Jewish children.
«The exact number, I never knew it. The OSE told me several hundred. You know, none of my comrades thought about the post-war period. For us, the post-war period was a myth that existed in our wishes and dreams. But we were at the front, in constant danger," said Georges Loinger. However, historians estimate that he helped to 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 created the subsidiary of an Israeli shipping company in Paris, which he managed until his retirement. President of the Association des anciens déportés de la résistance juive en 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 watch these meetings in video below.
All our thoughts are with his loved ones.
Georges Loinger, the Alsatian child smuggler
Georges Loinger: éduquer et sauver par le sport (27 November 2011)
