Marc Salomone / 122 bis boulevard Davout / 75020 Paris
06.28.22.88.96 / Email: marcsalomone@sfr.fr / blog: madic50.blogspot.com
Paris, Monday February 19, 2024
FOR THE RECOGNITION OF THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY (PCF) AND THE COMMUNIST YOUTH (JC), AS RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS, FROM 1940 TO 1945.
“By honoring those who refused to submit to the inevitability of the exterminating will of Nazi ideology, the Medal of the Righteous contributes to restoring History to its truth. » Simone VEIL
Robert Birenbaum, with the collaboration of Antonin Amado and the preface by Denis Peschanski, testifies to his participation in the Resistance, under the title “16 years, resistance” (Stock editions).
Born in 1926, he was 14 years old in 1940 and 16 years old in 1942, during the Vél' d'Hiv Roundup, following which he joined and joined the Communist Youth. He was 19 years old in 1945. He joined the French army.
1)- The yellow star
In 1941, the yellow star distinguished two categories of French, those who rejected Jews and those who welcomed them.
Robert Birenbaum, alias Guy dans la Résistance, sheds light on these French people who welcome the Jews. He himself presents them in two distinct but interpenetrating networks.
1- Hosts
“For more than two years, from July 18, 1942 to August 25, 1944, Thérèse (who would become his wife) and her parents had lived in a storage room of six square meters, under the roof of a building on rue Saint-Maur, in Paris, hidden by a “modest French couple”.
There will be such people, natural or legal, throughout France and in the most diverse environments.
2- The fighters
“After the Vél’ d’Hiv roundup, which did not hit him, he went into hiding. He is sixteen years old. Trained by his friends, then by his aunt Dora, he joined the communist youth. He took the nickname, the blase as they say, of Guy, in homage to Guy Môquet, the young communist shot in October 1941, at the age of seventeen, a name he would give to his second son. »
What the Resistance Guy recalls and what historians establish is the almost fusional link from 1940 to 1945 of the Jewish fighters and the communists; Jeunesses Communistes (JC) and French Communist Party (PCF).
They were massively and indiscriminately shot as communists and Jews.
In fact, in the responses to the desire for engagement in the fight against the Occupier and anti-Semitic persecutions, this unity took on the appearance of being obvious.
Even those who were not communists in thought, like Guy, had as their only path membership in the Communist Youth.
“I wasn’t political; Besides, I have never been a communist in my life, even if I have always voted left, communist or socialist, out of loyalty to my friends. But, opposite the grocery store that my parents ran, the shoemaker Nathan, a German Jewish émigré, introduced me to the ideas of Karl Marx. I joined the Communist Youth because they were fighting. »
This membership gave them the tools to carry out their initial program, which he summarizes as follows: “Above all, I want to pay tribute to them, my friends,” says Robert, with fire in his eyes. We were young, we were crazy, we wanted to fight to throw the Germans out. And we did it! »
Joining the PCF and the JC allowed them to fight simultaneously as Jews and as French against an enemy who denied them the right to be men, who wanted to kill them all and destroy their country; was it adopted, as for Manouchian and all the heroes of the MOI (immigrant workforce).
The PCF and the JC were a major site of political and armed combat for Jews on French national soil from 1940 to 1945.
The first deadly attack against the occupying troops, on August 21, 1941, at the Barbès-Rochechouart station, well sums up this united support of Jewish fighters and communist organizations.
Indeed, Pierre Georges, alias Fabien, is surrounded by Gilbert Brustlein, Albert Gueusquin and Fernant Zalkinov.
The Jews paid a high price for their commitment to communist resistance, political and armed.
Through this political and military commitment, they died or won (“we succeeded!”) as leaders of fighting France: “I was sixteen, my comrades were twenty, I was the little guy, the little brother? And I moved up the ranks very quickly. »
There were 320,000 Jews in 1940. 76,000 left. There remained 244 thousand in 1945.
It seems self-evident that this combative and political fusion of Jews and other French people actively participated in saving three-quarters of the Jews in France.
This welcome allowed Jews, indiscriminately, to join forces with other French people and fighters in defining the policy of the Resistance, in the execution of its battles and in the political and administrative construction of the democratic France of the Liberation.
It therefore had a decisive role in the social disqualification of old anti-Semitism and the reestablishment at the forefront of Jews in post-war France. This was not the case everywhere in Europe.
2)- Recognition
In the same way that the yellow star distinguished the French by twos, the recognition of the merits of opposition to this crime also seems to distinguish the French by twos.
Those who are entitled to this recognition from Israel and those who should undoubtedly forget the part they played in the recovery of the Jews and the Nation.
Unlike National recognition which honors warlike exploits and public risks taken but ignores obscure and anonymous services; the recognition of the fight against what will be called "the Shoah" seems to exclusively dedicate the heroisms unnoticed by the public (personal or collective) and forget the public fights and a fortiori political and armed ones.
1- The anonymous heroes
“This man and woman, Rose and Désiré Dinanceau, Robert Birenbaum are now fighting to have them recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem. He spoke about it to President Macron at Mont Valérien, and he intends to evoke their memory again, if he has the opportunity, during the entry ceremony, this February 21, to the Pantheon of Missak Manouchian, accompanied by his marries Mélinee.
This is the last fight of a just, generous and humble man. As true heroes know how to be.”
They are recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.
2- Public fights
In the same way, communist organizations must be recognized as Righteous Among the Nations for their capacity to welcome Jews in order to combat the German Occupation and its consequences and to define democratic politics.
One of the major questions for Jews after the war will be to understand the impotence of community opposition to the genocidal enterprise to which their community was the object.
We cannot understand the biases of the Israeli government, nor the solidarity of the diaspora with Israel, without referring to this questioning.
It is precisely to this question of immediate frontal combat that the PCF and the JC provided an answer; among others certainly, but of an unequaled magnitude during the war.
How can we believe that Jews would have the place that is theirs in France without this equal and full participation in the political and armed Resistance on national soil?
3)- The righteous among the Nations
On August 19, 1953, the Memorial Institute of Martyrs and Heroes of the Shoah -YAD VASHEM was created in Jerusalem.
In 1963, a Commission chaired by a judge of the Supreme Court of the State of Israel was responsible for awarding the title of “Righteous Among the Nations”, the highest civilian distinction awarded by the Jewish State, to individuals non-Jews who, at the risk of their lives, helped Jews persecuted by the Nazi occupiers.
1- Yad Vashem considers that the homage paid to the Righteous Among the Nations has an educational and moral significance:
a- Israel has an ethical obligation to recognize, honor and salute, on behalf of the Jewish people, non-Jews who, despite great risks to themselves and their loved ones, have helped Jews in a when they needed it most;
b- the actions of the Righteous prove that it was possible to provide at least some help to the Jews.
2- Since 1963, a “tribute commission”, chaired by a Judge of the Supreme Court of Israel, has been created to award the title “Righteous Among the Nations”.
The commission respects precise criteria and relies on methodical documentation based mainly on direct testimony. The files enabling the recognition of a Righteous Person to be established must establish, with several concordant testimonies, probative facts such as:
a- the fact of having provided aid in situations where Jews were powerless and threatened with death or deportation to concentration camps;
b- the fact of having been aware that by providing this assistance, the rescuer was risking his life, his safety or his personal liberty, the Nazis considering assistance to Jews as a crime;
c- the fact of not having sought any reward or material compensation in return for the help provided
3- The Yad Vashem France committee thus establishes the recognition of the quality of Righteous Among Nations:
“The persons thus distinguished must have provided, at the conscious risk of their lives, that of their loved ones, and without request for compensation, genuine help to one or more Jewish people in a situation of danger.
The communist organizations from 1940 to 1945 ticked all the boxes of these demands.
4)- Conclusion
This is why the French public authorities, the French Jewish community authorities, must ask the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem to recognize the PCF and the JC of the war period from 1940 to 1945 as Righteous Among the Nations.
If the PCF is too heavy politically for the Yad Vashem Institute to bear, the Young Communists, JC, of the period 40-45, which were the basis of the entry of Jews into Armed Resistance must be recognized by it.
Marc SALOMONE
PS: the quotes are taken from the Point article by Jérôme Cordelier, published online on February 14, 2024.
https://www.msn.com/fr-fr/divertissement/celebrites/robert-birenbaum-on-été-jeunes-on-été-fous-on-voulait-se-battre-pour-foutre-les-allemands- outside/ar-BB1ihIE1
Robert Birenbaum: “We were young, we were crazy, we wanted to fight to throw the Germans out”
Article by By Jérôme Cordelier
“They were real heroes. » Every time he talks about the Manouchian group, Robert Birenbaum has difficulty containing his emotion. “As soon as I talk about them, I cry,” he slips into a sob. This was the case when the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron presented him with the Legion of Honor on June 18, 2023, at Mont Valérien, in the presence of Missak Manouchian's niece. “She kissed me, in tears, and that disturbed me a lot,” remembers the old resistance fighter. Being kissed by Manouchian's niece was also a Legion of Honor for me.
As he tells it in the story of these years of war, 16 years, resistance, which comes out this February 14 (Stock editions), Robert Birenbaum had an appointment, on November 17, 1943, to join the group of snipers and partisans (FTP): They were arrested the day before? “I had insisted for days on joining them, for me it meant that I was going to take part in the armed struggle, they had admitted me among them, and they were taken,” sighs the old man even today . Their arrest and the Red Poster that the Nazis displayed later, in February 1944, on the walls of Paris with the names of the faces of those they called "the army of crime", far from demobilizing us, we have galvanized. »
Son of Moshe and Rywka Birenbaum, Jewish emigrants who had fled anti-Semitic Poland for the homeland of human rights, Robert Birenbaum, born July 21, 1926 in Paris, was only a teenager when the German army entered the French capital. An Occupation which is starting slowly, he notes. “The German soldiers were handsome, they looked civilized, they distributed soup to the unfortunate, they did everything to seduce the population,” Robert Birenbaum tells us. And the Jews were lucky to be able to understand them, because Yiddish is a derivative of the German language. But from 1941, the day the yellow star was first put on, there was suddenly no more sympathy: Jews became different. Wearing the star changed everything. »
Young Robert strives to hide this star. “I was going to sing at the Pigalle café where the saxophonist Robert Mavounzy was playing, hiding it behind a newspaper,” he remembers. I wasn't yet resistant, I was carefree. » This carelessness suddenly ends the day when Robert comes across a group of German soldiers in the street who, seeing his star, beat him up. Because he is Jewish. “That day I swore revenge,” he said through tight lips.
After the Vél' d'Hiv roundup, which did not hit him, he went into hiding. He is sixteen years old. Trained by his friends, then by his aunt Dora, he joined the communist youth. He takes the nickname, the blase as they say, of Guy, in homage to Guy Môquet, the young communist shot in October 1941, at the age of seventeen? first name that he will give to his second son.
“I was very mature for my age,” Robert Birenbaum recalls. Pretty good student; we read my essays in class. I wasn’t political; Besides, I have never been a communist in my life, even if I have always voted left, communist or socialist, out of loyalty to my friends. But, opposite the grocery store that my parents ran, the shoemaker Nathan, a German Jewish émigré, introduced me to the ideas of Karl Marx. I joined the Communist Youth because they were fighting. I was sixteen, my friends were twenty, I was the little guy, the little brother? And I moved up the ranks very quickly. »
Robert distributes leaflets all over Paris, even in places where the Germans are swarming, taking big risks. Endowed with a solid patter? nicknamed "Mr. Baratin"?, he became a recruiting agent to enlist young people, then sector head, in the 19th arrondissement, an executive of the MOI (immigrant workforce), and soldier of the Rajman company, component of the Liberty Battalion, after the liberation of Paris. He walks the streets of Paris with an automatic pistol that he has hidden in his underwear, ready to draw from the pierced pocket of his pants. He will only use it once, on a soldier, whom it will not reach, he specifies. “While he never killed a German officer or caused a train to derail, Robert Birenbaum was a genuine resistance fighter. An everyday resistance fighter", underlines Antonin Amado, who helped him gather his memories for this "written testimony of primary importance", as the historian Denis Peschanski, who wrote the preface, describes it.
A moving, dignified story delivered without embellishment or embellishment by this man over 97 years old, blessed with Olympic physical fitness maintained by tennis? which he was still playing a few years ago? and a breathtaking memory fueled by a passion for crosswords? “I was a force 5 on the ballpoint pen,” he explains. One of the last witnesses, who describes himself as "a low-ranking member of the Resistance who had only done his duty."
it is others first that Robert thinks of, every day. These fighting brothers, whose names and faces still inhabit him. “Above all, I want to pay tribute to them, my friends,” says Robert, with fire in his eyes. We were young, we were crazy, we wanted to fight to throw the Germans out. And we did it! »
Ghosts pass by. Pierre Georges, alias Colonel Fabien, “who lived at 100, boulevard de la Villette, who was the first to kill a German officer, at the Barbès metro station, and who died on the front, three days after the long conversation we had all night.” Henri Krasucki who, before being the tough boss of the CGT that we know, was one of the leaders of the Parisian communist resistance. “I met Henri Krasucki on September 21, 1942, the day after the first demonstration that we had organized on the Champs-Élysées,” says Robert Birenbaum. He was responsible for the cadres of the Communist Youth. I see him again as if it were yesterday, huddled in his overcoat, following me at a distance wherever I went to make sure I wasn't being tailed by the police? »
But, alongside the well-known figures, there are many other, discreet ones. Maurice Zylbert and Marcel Kaminsky, or even Robert Endewelt, Paul Schwartz, Jean Capievic, Jacob Tancerman? “Between the five of us, we supervised more than two hundred men,” specifies Robert Birenbaum, who makes a point of citing them all in his book. And there’s also this German prisoner screaming “Heil Hitler! », and whom Robert's comrades would have lynched if he had not intervened. “By acting in this way,” he told us, “I signified the difference between a fanatical Nazi and a Frenchman who, despite the attacks, remained human. We respect the prisoners. This was my revenge on those who had beaten up the Jewish child that I was. »
From these memories, a name emerges, and sits enthroned in Robert Birenbaum’s Pantheon. That of Thérèse-Tauba Zylberstein. The one who, met on the very day of the Liberation of Paris, would become his wife for sixty-five years, until her death on February 6, 2009, and whom he evokes with the eyes of the first day, in front of us: “C She was a very beautiful, very intelligent woman, she was the one who made me who I am, and who shaped our family. " A silence. The nonagenarian tightens his hands on the silver pommel of his cane, and he blurts out, straight into his eyes: “I say what is. »
For more than two years, from July 18, 1942 to August 25, 1944, Thérèse and her parents had lived in a six-square-meter storage room, under the roof of a building on rue Saint-Maur, in Paris, hidden by a " modest French couple”. This man and this woman, Rose and Désiré Dinanceau, Robert Birenbaum are now fighting to have them recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem. He spoke about it to President Macron at Mont Valérien, and he intends to evoke their memory again, if he has the opportunity, during the entry ceremony, this February 21, to the Pantheon of Missak Manouchian, accompanied by his marries Mélinee. This is the last fight of a just, generous and humble man. As true heroes know how to be.
16 years, resistant, by Robert Birenbaum, with the collaboration of Antonin Amado, preface by Denis Peschanski, Stock editions, 173 pages, 18.50 euros. He is the guest of La Grande Librairie this evening on France 5.
