80th Anniversary Auschwitz-Birkenau january 27/1945

 

 

 

Eighty years ago, Red Army soldiers liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. In the snow of a Polish plain, in the frozen mud of these lands that once served to feed men, they pass deserted watchtowers and cross lines of barbed wire aggressively thrown towards the sky. They discover there a horror that will haunt the human race for eternity. Abandoned bodies lie everywhere. Amassed and linked together by the frost, scattered on straw mattresses and inside barracks, the dead are everywhere. Between them, wandering like ghosts, floating in their uniforms that are too big and too thin, 7,000 still live. Skeletal and miserable, They seemed closer to the dead than to the living. Locked in a body that human consciousness seems to have deserted, all their gestures testify to their weakness.

For several days, since the last SS men fled, dragging along on the death marches more than 70,000 wounded and exhausted deportees, the majority of whom would be swallowed up in the night and fog of the frozen expanses of Silesia, the death factory has ceased its perpetual hum. The barked orders, as if echoing the howling of dogs, the cries of the victims and those of the executioners, the cracking of the ovens, the muffled hissing of the chimneys have faded away. All these noises, the noises of genocide, have given way to a silence that the dead then share with the living.
They do not yet know it, but the soldiers of the Red Army have just discovered the greatest industry of killing ever conceived and operated by Man. By men who did not love Man. Terrified and astonished, they do not yet know that they are at the heart of the greatest mass grave in history. The earth and the low clouds are laden with the ashes of a million one hundred thousand dead, and more broadly, the countries and vast lands of Eastern Europe have seen 6 million Jews murdered.
Auschwitz has belonged to Humanity ever since. The wound that the Nazis opened on the violated and tortured lands of Poland must neither close nor even heal in the conscience of men. It must remain alive in the heart of each mind.
Because today, while anti-Semitic acts are experiencing an undeniable resurgence in France and Europe, while some are trying to import a foreign conflict and its share of rifts, how can we not see that the causes of the Nazi horror have not disappeared, but rather that they have mutated, like a virus that asks to kill again?
The “never again” that the Shoah imposes on us is a categorical imperative. We must ensure that it is respected with vigilance and perseverance.

"RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS" PLAILLY 1942.

History:

Fernande and Emond Cheval are Protestants. He is the janitor of the synagogue on rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, she is a mechanic. They live with their three boys a few streets away, at 8 rue du Vert Bois in the 3rd arrondissement.

Zelik Zylberberg, born on 15/12/1893 in Koszee (Poland), tailor, and his wife Cécile Ségal live across from the synagogue at number 24 rue Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth, with their three daughters Claire-Rose, born on 24/06/1927 in Paris, Tenia-Jeannine known as Tony, born on 15/08/1929 in Paris, and Marie-Louise known as Malou).

 

 

 

In the summer of 1942, Mrs. Zylberberg was hospitalized in psychiatry at Sainte-Anne Hospital. On July 31, 1942, Zelik Zylberberg was arrested. A month later, his eldest daughters Claire and Tenia, aged 15 and 13, were also arrested. They were all deported to Auschwitz.

Zelig was deported without return from Pithiviers to Auschwitz by convoy no. 13 on July 31, 1942.

Claire and Tony were deported without return from Drancy to Auschwitz by convoy no. 20 on August 17, 1942.

Fernande and Edmond Cheval then welcomed Malou, who was barely two years old, into their home.

They watch over her like a member of their family and Malou becomes a little sister to their son, born in 1936.

Fernande and Edmond Cheval take the little girl to Plailly in Oise where they obtain false papers in their name for her.

At the Liberation, Malou's father and sisters do not return from deportation. Her aunt and her mother, who is sick, cannot take care of her. The Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants then decides to entrust the education of the little girl to Fernande and Edmond Cheval, until her admission to the Children's Home in Rueil-Malmaison on December 17, 1946 so that she can be raised in the Jewish tradition.

Marie-Louise will finally be adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Copolovici on June 25, 1972.

Fernande and Edmond Cheval were recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" in 2006, posthumously.

marc brécy January 27, 2025.

IN 1960 I  WAS 20 YEARS OLD !

1962 End of the Algerian War.
19th DI 69th Transmission Company in Algeria (The ears of France)

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 1962, the Evian Accords, called up for military service in Algeria, it is impossible for me to forget.

 

This was the last war of the French. Indochina had only concerned professional soldiers. Distant battles, wrongly quickly forgotten. The Algerian War mobilized more than 1.5 million young conscripts and, as such, it deeply affected all French families. Not one without a parent sent to Algeria. March 19, 1962, the day of the ceasefire established by the Evian Accords.

It all began on November 1, 1954, around 1:15 a.m.; Algeria was asleep! The first explosions resounded across the country: it was "All Saints' Day," the beginning of the escalation that would last eight years (in reality, the first signs began in Sétif, Kabylie, on May 8, 1945).

At the end of February 1962, with my comrades from the contingent, we boarded the "Ville d'Alger". The twenty-hour crossing to "white" Algiers! Our morale was at its lowest. As we got off the boat, an officer explained to us that we would be staying in transit in an army building for a few days, before joining the 19th DI - 69th Transmission Company in Sétif (Kabylie), then Bougie after Algeria's independence was proclaimed on July 5, 1962, at the end of the violent eight-year conflict.

July 5th saw popular jubilation celebrating independence. On the very day of the country's freedom, a massacre of around a hundred people took place in Oran, not to mention several thousand missing, not all of whom were found in the following weeks.

In 1962, there were still 400,000 conscripts in the field. For some, military service lasted eighteen or even thirty months, 15,583 died in combat, and 7,917 were victims of various accidents (after March 19, there were many deaths or disappearances, especially Harkis). But beyond the losses, it was a real trauma for an entire generation. Many young people remained deeply scarred by the conflict. Tens of thousands still receive disability pensions today. For those who turned 20 between 1954 and 1962, the transition from adolescent to adult life was terrible. How many lives were shattered, how many dreams dashed?

At the beginning of October 1962, I was finally released from military obligations with other conscripts. It was finally "the end" after 26 months in the army. We left Bougie by train in the morning for Algiers. We arrived around 5 p.m., I left my kit in the room, then with some comrades, we went to the restaurant on rue d'Isly to eat steak and chips! The next day, it was the big departure for Marseille on board the Sidi Bel Abbès , then the train to Paris.

I'm finally back to civilian life! Friends , but alas single... In June 1963, I met my wife "Lily" in Italy, originally from a small village on the banks of the Vienne, 6 km from Oradour-sur-Glane (a martyred village in 1944). We have now been married for 61 years. Our grandson Maël may read this page recounting his grandfather's 20th birthday .

( marc brécy retired from the aviation, March 2025)