Tribute to Gilberte Nissim Steg, who died this Sunday, September 26, 2021 in her 98th year

© Shoah Memorial / Gilberte Nissim in September 1941 with the EEIF at Bierville (Seine Maritime) – (top right on the photo)

Gilberte Nissim Steg passed away on Sunday, September 26, 2021, in her 98e year.

The Shoah Memorial pays tribute to the memory of a resistance fighter who has become an activist for remembrance.
Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones, to whom we extend our sincere condolences.

Gilberte Nissim was born on March 17, 1924 in Salonika (Greece). Her family moved to France in 1932. Gilberte and her sister Hedy join the movement Eclaireurs Israélites before the war. At the time of the German occupation in Paris, they were not worried by anti-Jewish laws until February 1943, because of their Greek nationality. They remain active within the EIFs. Hedy thus has a UGIF card that allows her to move freely, especially during the Vel d'hiv roundup, where she and her sister Gilberte will welcome at the Lamarck center isolated Jewish children whose parents have been arrested.

From February 1943, the Nissim family hides. Hedy will be arrested during a check, but Gilberte manages to escape. Hedy was deported by convoy 53 on 25 March 1943.

In March 1943, Gilberte goes into hiding and the resistance under the false name of Claire Marchand, under the orders of Freddy Menahem, leader of the resistance movement of the Eclaireurs Israélites de la zone Nord. She carries out missions of liaison and accompaniment of children and adults towards hiding places, more especially in the departments of Orne and Mayenne. It is by bicycle that she travels the roads of these areas to keep in touch with the hidden Jews, to ensure the payment of their pension, to forward their mail and to avoid them feeling abandoned.

At the Liberation, Gilberte volunteered at the Lutetia reception center for deportees as a member of the Youth Social Service. Hedy will not come back from deportation.

Gilberte pursued medical studies and married in 1951 with Ady Steg.

© Shoah Memorial – Address by Gilberte Nissim Steg on the forecourt of the Unknown Jewish Martyr Memorial, with Rabbi Emile Kacman, at the official Hazkara ceremony, September 11, 1994.

Excerpt from the Revue d'histoire de la Shoah, le Monde Juif, no. 161, 1997

Les Eclaireurs Israélites de France in the war