Ida Grinspan

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Ida Grinspan (born on November 19, 1929 in Paris as Ida Fensterszab; died on September 24, 2018 there ) was a French survivor of the Holocaust and a contemporary witness . She was arrested at the age of fourteen and deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp via the Drancy assembly camp in 1944 . She is one of the few who was used for forced labor and who ultimately survived one of the death marches. It was only when she was around 60 that she began to report on these experiences as a contemporary witness.

family

Ida Grinspan was the daughter of Jewish parents who immigrated from Poland . Her maiden name was Ida Fensterszab. Like her brother Adolphe, who was born in 1924, she had French citizenship . At the beginning of the 1920s her parents had left Poland because of the economic situation and anti-Semitism in order to emigrate to France in 1924 after a stopover in Berlin . Her father Jankiel Fensterszab (born October 5, 1898 in Koprzywnica , murdered August 5, 1944 in Auschwitz ) was a tailor. Her mother Chaja (maiden name Nysenbaum, born February 1, 1898 in Ostrów , murdered August 1, 1942 in Auschwitz) helped her husband. From 1935 the family lived on Rue Clavel in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. In this district she attended a girls' school. She spoke both French and Yiddish .

separation

In 1940, after the German attack on France began , the parents sent Ida to the provinces to protect her from the dangers of a feared bombing of Paris. She therefore lived in Lié near Sompt ( Deux-Sèvres ) with the farmers Alice and Paul Marché. Here she continued her school attendance. Despite the German occupation of France , they were successfully integrated into village and school life.

Ida saw her mother for the last time in April 1942, because she was arrested on July 16, 1942 in the course of the raids on the Jews in Paris . Chaja Fensterszab was deported from Drancy to Auschwitz on July 27, 1942 with the No. 11 Jewish deportation train . Ida's father and brother managed to hide.

Jankiel Fensterszab was denounced and arrested on July 23, 1944. He was transported from Drancy to Auschwitz on the number 77 Jewish deportation train - the last train of its kind - and murdered there. Her brother survived the Holocaust because he was able to hide in Coubron .

Arrest, deportation, Auschwitz, death march

Ida Grinspan was arrested by French gendarmes on January 31, 1944 and then taken to Drancy. On February 22, 1944, she was also deported to Auschwitz on deportation train number 68. There she survived the selection process and was used for forced labor . On January 18, 1945, the SS forced her on a death march from Auschwitz concentration camp to the west. After a stop at the Ravensbrück concentration camp , the prisoners were driven to the Neustadt-Glewe concentration camp . As a result of the exertion she fell ill with typhus . Her feet were affected by gangrene . An interned Polish resistance fighter and nurse looked after them and prevented an impending amputation .

After the liberation

After the camp was liberated on May 2, 1945 by troops of the American armed forces , hospital stays for convalescence followed until September 1946 , first in the Soviet occupation zone , then in Paris and Switzerland. There she made friends with the writer Charlotte Delbo .

She later married Charles Grinspan. The couple had a daughter.

Contemporary witness

For many years Ida Grinspan did not speak about the Holocaust. She didn't think her country was ripe for it. She also avoided questions from her daughter. Serge Klarsfeld convinced her in 1988 to reconsider her position and persuaded her to be available for talks with young people. In the same year, she and a group of young people visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum . Between 1988 and 2001 she made 20 such trips. She made herself available as a witness in order to counter the denial of the Holocaust and to raise awareness of serious human rights violations . She was a guest at schools into old age.

In 2002 she published her memoirs together with the French journalist Bertrand Poirot-Delpech . The English translation appeared 16 years later.

In 2010, French media reported on the mayor's and deputy mayor's attempt at censorship of Parthenay . They had wanted to forbid Ida Grinspan from reporting to pupils at a school that it was the French gendarmerie who arrested her in 1944. According to the criticism in the media, this local attempt at censorship is tantamount to covering up the collaboration between French government agencies and the Germans during the period of occupation .

Awards

She was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor on November 19, 1999 . On April 15, 2016 she was appointed officer of the Legion of Honor.

The primary school in Sompt has been named after her since 2007. A school in Paris also bears her name. The school for girls that she attended as a child was located in the building that now houses the Claude Chappe - Ida Grinspan College in Paris .

plant

  • Together with Bertrand Poirot-Delpech: J'ai pas pleuré , France Loisirs / Robert Laffont, Paris 2003, ISBN 978-2-7441-6093-6 . - French. (I didn't cry)
    • Spanish translation: Yo no lloré. Translated by Andrés Alonso Martos, Anthropos Editorial, Rubí / Barcelona 2011, ISBN 978-84-7658-984-7 .
    • English translation: You've Got to Tell Them: A French Girl's Experience of Auschwitz and After . Translated by Charles B. Potter. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge 2018, ISBN 978-0-8071-6980-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ L'ancienne deportee d'Auschwitz, Ida Grinspan, est décédée à 89 ans. In: Ouest-France . September 25, 2018, accessed December 4, 2019 (French). Ida Grinspan is dead. In: auschwitz.info . August 26, 2018, accessed December 4, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c Claire Podetti well as teachers and students of Charles Peguy School, Palaiseau : The Biography of Jankiel Fensterszab. In: Convoi 77. Retrieved on December 4, 2019 (English).
  3. ↑ Information from Yad Vashem's Holocaust database , April 6, 2006, p. 7. Accessed December 4, 2019 (pdf, 105 kB). Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database: Jankiel Fensterszab. In: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . February 25, 1996, accessed December 4, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database: Chaja Fensterszab. In: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. February 25, 1996, accessed December 4, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b Qui est Ida Grinspan? In: Collège Claude Chappe - Ida Grinspan. June 26, 2019, accessed on December 4, 2019 (French, information on Ida Grinspan on the website of the school of her name)
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g Katherine Rosea: Ida Grinspan and Bertrand Poirot-Delpech, You've Got to Tell Them: A French Girl's Experience of Auschwitz and After . In: H-France Review . tape 19 , no. 86 , June 2019, ISSN  1553-9172 , p. 1–5 (English, book review).
  7. ↑ Ida Grinspan, témoignage, lycée Edgar Quinet et l'affaire de Parthenay. In: Le Cercle d'étude de la déportation et de la Shoah. December 3, 2006, accessed December 4, 2019 (French).
  8. ^ A b Dominique Le Lay: Ida Grinspan, rescapée d'Auschwitz, témoigne. In: Ouest-France. February 16, 2018, accessed December 4, 2019 (French).
  9. ↑ See the information in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Database of Holocaust Victims , accessed December 5, 2019.
  10. ↑ information on the Holocaust database of Yad Vashem , accessed on 5 December of 2019.
  11. ↑ a b French Jewish grandmother banned from telling school gendarmes handed her over to Nazis. In: The Daily Telegraph . April 29, 2010, accessed December 4, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Martin Doerry : A Last Remnant of Dignity . In: Der Spiegel No. 50/2019, December 7, 2019, pp. 48–50.
  13. ↑ See Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Auschwitz's last invention was the death march. In: The world . January 18, 2015, accessed December 4, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Andreas Münchow: When the gate opened ... In: Ludwigsluster Tageblatt . May 3, 2015, accessed December 4, 2019 .
  15. ^ Marie Paule Hervieu: Ida Grinspan 1929-2018, une biography. In: Le Cercle d'étude de la déportation et de la Shoah. September 25, 2018, accessed December 4, 2019 (French).
  16. ^ Marc Champenois: Ordre de la Légion d'honneur - Nominations et promotions du 15-04-2016. In: france-phaleristique.com. April 17, 2016, accessed December 5, 2019 (French).
  17. ↑ Décret du 15 avril 2016 portant promotion et nomination. In: legifrance.gouv.fr. April 17, 2016, accessed December 5, 2019 (French).
  18. ↑ Une soirée en hommage à Ida Grinspan à Melle le jeudi 11 octobre. In: La Nouvelle République du Center-Ouest. October 10, 2018, accessed December 5, 2019 (French).
  19. ↑ Collège Claude Chappe - Ida Grinspan website of the school, accessed on December 6, 2019 (in French) with a picture of the building.
personal data
SURNAME Grinspan, Ida
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fensterszab, Ida (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French survivor of the Holocaust and contemporary witness
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 2018
Place of death Paris