{"id":10543,"date":"2013-11-05T16:54:02","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T22:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=10543"},"modified":"2013-11-12T08:14:27","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T14:14:27","slug":"the-french-jews-who-anticipated-the-nazi-onslaught","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/the-french-jews-who-anticipated-the-nazi-onslaught\/","title":{"rendered":"The French Jews who anticipated the Nazi onslaught"},"content":{"rendered":"

By CNAAN LIPHSHIZ<\/p>\n

(JTA) — His hearing isn\u2019t what it used to be, but Georges Loinger still remembers Adolf Hitler\u2019s voice emanating from the radio at his Strasbourg home.<\/p>\n

Growing up in the heavily Germanic Alsace region of eastern France, Loinger and his family tuned in regularly to broadcasts of Hitler’s speeches. They heard his \u201celectrifying voice\u201d and the plans he had in store for the Jews of Europe.<\/p>\n

So when the Nazis’ anti-Jewish propaganda turned to deadly violence on Kristallnacht, the pogrom unleashed on the Jews of Germany and Austria 75 years ago next week, the Jews of Strasbourg were ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had read Nazi propaganda,\u201d said Loinger, 103, who fought in the French resistance. \u201cWe spoke to hundreds of Jewish refugees from Germany. We knew what was coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historians say the knowledge, unusual for Jewish communities outside Germany and Austria, made the 20,000 Jews of Alsace and nearby Lorraine better prepared to face the forthcoming Nazi occupation.<\/p>\n

The community was able to help German Jews, hide heritage assets and private possessions and, most important, survive. Ten percent of the Jewish population of Alsace and Lorraine perished in the Holocaust, compared to 22 percent elsewhere in France.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom testimonies and the wealth of material we have, we see that Alsatian Jews were much more aware of what was happening in Germany than Jews in Paris,\u201d said Serge Klarsfeld, a Nazi hunter and one of the world\u2019s foremost authorities on the Holocaust in France.<\/p>\n

A key figure in the effort, according to Klarsfeld, was a Strasbourg physician named Joseph Weil, who used a vast network of contacts to help Jews flee Nazi Germany for Switzerland and southern France. One of the groups, OSE, is credited with rescuing 5,000 Jewish children.<\/p>\n

Weil also began sounding the alarm as a volunteer instructor at Strasbourg\u2019s Merkaz Hanoar youth center, telling his charges that Hitler was much more powerful than they had been told. Weill’s warnings went unheeded by Parisian Jewish leaders, who believed Hitler to be no match for the mighty French army.<\/p>\n

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