Baruch Nathan

RelatioNet  BA NA 32 LU FA

 

Interviewers:

Liron Ezra - lirone100@walla.com

Shirel Dvora

 


Survivor:Code: RelatioNet BA NA 32 LU FA

Family Name: Nathan
First Name: Baruch
Father Name: Mother Name:
Birth Date: 1932
Town In Holocaust: Luxembourg 
Country In Holocaust:  France

Address Today: living in Kfar Saba, Israel

Interview 

Nathan Baruch was born in a country called Luxembourg. This country is between France, Belgium and Germany. Today there are not many Jews from Luxembourg and most of the Jews who were there, were exterminated. He was born into a conservative Jewish family. He was just about six years old when he went to a non Jewish school. He was there only for one year.

When he was seven years old the war started. When he was in school, the children knew that he was a Jewish kid, and they started to hit him. After a year he and his family ran away from Luxembourg to France.

France was divided into two, occupied France and free France (the Vishi's France). Even though, many people in free France were collaborators with the Germans. Nathan and his family were smuggled into free France and there they lived from 1941 – 1945, throughout the war.

In France they lived in a barn that transformed into a living room, and the French people helped them. They lived in a village where there were three houses. They were not any Jews. They lived in the barn for over four years, and during the first months, his father was with the family, but later the French police came to recruit him, and they took him to a work camp, and there he made things for the Germans army. While working there, his father succeeded in running away, but unfortunately, the French caught him again when he tried to come back to the village. The French caught him and took him in a train to Germany to an extermination camp. The French partisans succeeded in stopping the train and releasing all the Jews and others that were inside. His father succeeded in getting "Home" to the village and this was towards the end of the war, and he was very sick. A few years later he died. He was still a young man.

Nathan didn’t have much time with his parents. He didn’t go to school every day, because of the situation at that time. He and his brothers worked in the fields for the farmers, doing anything that was asked in order to bring food to the family. They didn’t get money; they got potatoes, a little bit of butter and vegetables.

Nathan went to school in the village, it was 4 kilometers to school, and 4 kilometers back. He and another friend were the only Jewish students. The teacher knew that and sat them by the windows because; if the French police came with the Gestapo men to look for Jews they could jump out of the windows and hide. One day it happened, the French police came and they jumped outside. The beautiful thing was that the other children in his class didn’t say anything about this even if they asked them.

He was also a messenger for the "Maki" partisan group, he and another friend. In those times they did not have radio contact and the partisans needed help to contact other partisans. So he was a messenger between the two groups of partisans, he passed messages between them, and in return for this they gave them good things to eat.

There was some distance between villages and on the road there were telephone poles with telephones wires; tied to a piece of porcelain which was the contact between cities.

Nathan was about 9 years old when the partisans gave him and another boy (who was not Jewish!) slingshots to break the porcelain glass in order to disrupt the telephone connections. Until one day the police caught them. The police took them to the police station, and they sat in prison for 4 days before a quick trial in court for what they had done. Nathan's mother came to the trial. At the trial they were very lucky, maybe the judge was in favor of the free French and against the Nazi that had taken over France. Even though the Gestapo  men stood there on the side and watched, the judge only sent them away with a fine and let them go, instead of sending them to jail .They didn’t have money to pay the fine, so the partisans collected the money for them. Nathan and his mother got back home, and she told him not to do anything like that again.

Nathan and his family continued with their life until the end of the war, and the Jews started to reorganize their lives again. Nathan was sent to a children's home when he was thirteen years old, and there all the children from all over Europe were reeducated. The organization that took them to the Jewish organization was called "Ose". There all the children learned everything from the beginning. For example, how to wear shoes, because in the village, they had worn Dutch clogs. They did not even know what underwear was, because they had not had them. Suddenly, they did not understand what was happening, because these things were new for them.

Nathan's parents moved to another place. They moved to a city called Lyon. This city was big, and his parents got organized and started to work and managed a Jewish restaurant. Nathan did not know what other help his parents got in Lyon. Later, Nathan moved to another children's home, and when he was there, he saw children who arrived from extermination camps. In this children's home, Nathan learned a profession, Mechanics. Nathan's parents moved again to another city. This city was called Grenoble. In Grenoble, Nathan's parents opened a Jewish restaurant. This restaurant was a workers' restaurant, and his parents managed the restaurant.

While Nathan was in a children's home in France, a Jewish delegation organized an "Aliyah" to Israel. Nathan didn’t have any doubts and joined. They arrived to the camp in Marcy and waited for a ship for about a month. The ship was built to hold 70 people, but they were 300 people on the ship. When Nathan and his friend came to Israel, they were sent to Aliyah camps in "Kiryat Haim". After this he went to "Kibbutz Sa'ad" to receive the religious education just as his parents had wished. He stayed in the kibbutz for one and half years.

 Then he joined the army, paratroopers; he was one of the first paratroopers, one of 70 paratroopers with Motta Gur, Moshe Levy, Raful and Arik Sharon. At the end of his military service, they asked him to stay in the army and to sign on as a permanent soldier, and he was there for a couple of years. When he was discharged from the army, he started looking for work. With    the money from the army he bought a little house in "Givataim" and began to study in order to complete matriculation exams.

Nathan started working on a tourist ship, in the bar. He was on the ship for 9 years! On the ship he also met his wife- Miriam Mezner. She was a nurse on the ship. They were together for years and decided to marry.

Later, Nathan's wife got pregnant, and she decided to get off the ship and Nathan stayed there, for a few more years. Miriam went to the house in "Givataim". She got pregnant twice, and gave birth to 2 girls while Nathan was still on the ship and worked.  After that Nathan got off the ship. Nathan's friend owned a small factory (today called "Teva"). and wanted Nathan to work there. Nathan worked there for 38 years as a maintenance manager. He did reserve in the army, and left when he was 58 years old, and continue working  in the factory.

Today Nathan lives in "Kfar Saba"; Nathan's wife, Miriam died in November 2003. His brothers and his sisters live around the world. Nathan keeps in touch with his friend from the army until today. Nathan was in four wars and a lot of reserve duties.

P.s

Nathan's first name is Baruch now or Benno then. But when he was in the army everybody started calling him by his last name – Nathan. So, the all world including his wife, children, and friends call him Nathan and they don’t know him by any other name.

 Luxembourg

Officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is a landlocked country in Western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France and Germany. In the First World War Germany invaded and occupied Luxembourg, but allowed it to keep its independence and political mechanisms.

During World War Two, Luxembourg kept a neutral policy, until Nazi Germany invaded and occupied it 1994, because it was in a strategic location for the Nazis. Luxembourg was formally annexed to Germany in 1942, because it was treated as a Germanic territory. NAZI occupation was more difficult and brutal than that of the Kaiser twenty years before. The government of Luxembourg was made helpless, trade unions abolished, and the Jewish population deported to death camps in the east.

Before the first three months of occupation were over the Germans abolished the Luxemburg army. In August 1942, the German occupation government ordered all men who were between the ages of 17 and 23 to be drafted into the German army. 10,200 men were successfully drafted into the German army and almost 300 lost their lives fighting for Hitler. Conditions were horrible and almost two hundred teens who were on the Eastern front died before the end of the war.

The fate of Luxembourg's Jews:

Before the German invasion, 3800 Jews lived in Luxembourg and many of them were refugees from Germany. On 10 may 1940, 1800 of Jews still remained. After Simon who was the president of Luxembourg, introduced the Nuremberg laws, the Jewish population's life became unbearable. Their shops, possessions and money were confiscated by the Germans, and all the Jewish employees were fired. The Jews were not allowed to enter public buildings and keep their pets. Between August 1940 and October 1941, 619 Jews were expelled from the country by the authorities. The Gestapo stayed with them in France and Spain, but since they were rejected there, they went on an endless journey from place to place.

On 23 August 1941, the curfew was introduced for the Jewish population and they were degraded to second class citizens. The synagogues, Luxembourg City and Esch sur Alzette were destroyed. In addition, Ettelbruck and Mondorf les Bains also were destroyed. The Nazis concentrated the Jews in the old monastery of Funfbrunnen. On 16 October 1941, their transportation began in the Ghetto of Litzmannstadt, and after April 1942 to the death camps of Hunsruck/Hinzert, Belsen, Sobibor,Majdanek and Theresienstadt. In June 1942, 11 people were sent directly to Auschwitz in the last transport, and only two of them survived.

On 17 June 1943, Gustav Simon announced that Luxembourg was free of Jews. 683 Jews were expelled, and only 43 Jews survived.

The liberation:

Luxembourg was freed by Allied forces in September 1944. They entered the capital city on 10 September 1944. The Germans retreated without a fight. One month before the start of the Battle of the Bulge, 250 soldiers of Waffenss had tried to recapture the town of Vianden from the Luxembourgish Resistance, during the Battle of Vianden, without success.

Today:

Luxembourg today is officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is a landlocked country in Western Europe, and borders with Belgium, France and Germany. In Luxembourg over a half a million people live today. Luxembourg is a representative democracy with a constitutional monarch. It is ruled by a Grand Duke, and it is the only country that has stayed a sovereign in the world's Grand Duchy. In addition, Luxembourg has a highly developed economy.

Luxembourg is a member of the European Union, NATO, OECD, the United Nations, Benelux and the Western European Union. It reflects political consensus in favor of economic, political and military integration. Luxembourg is the capital and largest city, and it is the seat of several institutions and agencies of the European Union.

The Luxembourg culture is a mix of Romance Europe and Germanic Europe; it is a borrowing from each of the different traditions. Luxembourg is a trilingual country. In Luxembourg people speak in different languages. German, French and Luxembourgish are official languages. Although Luxembourg is a secular country, most of Luxembourg is a Roman catholic.