Alexander Halaunbrenner (M / France, 1931), Holocaust survivor
Leon Halaunbrenner (M / Austria, France, 1929-1943), Holocaust victim
Alexander Halaunbrenner (M / France, 1931), Holocaust survivor
Mina Halaunbrenner (F / France, 1935-1944), Holocaust victim
Claudine Halaunbrenner (F / France, 1939-1944), Holocaust victim
Monique Halaunbrenner (F / France, 1941), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <France> <Hidden Children> <Auschwitz>
Biography
Leon Halaunbrenner was born 1929 in Austria. The family then moved from Austria to France. After the German invasion, father was arrested and shot. Leon was deported to Auschwitz where he was forced to work in a salt mine, and perished. Mother entrusted Mina and Claudine to the Children's Home in Izieu. Both girls were deported and murdered at Auschwitz. Mother and the other two children, Alexander and Monique, survived in hiding.
French Children of the Holocaust
Mina HALAUNBRENNER was born on June 25, 1935; her sister Claudine on April 2, 1939; and her brother Léon on April 21, 1929. They were the children of Jacob Halaunbrenner, born on July 12, 1902, in Drohobycz, Poland; and Ita-Rosa, née Hoffner, born on August 7, 1904, in Fustonowicz, Poland. The Halaunbrenners had five children altogether. Alexandre, their second child, was born on October 28, 1931; Monique, the baby, on December 5, 1941. Léon was born in Drohobycz, while all the others were born in Paris. The oldest, Léon, was arrested by the Lyons Gestapo along with his father at their home at 14 rue Pierre Loti in Villeurbanne, on October 24, 1943. The father was interned at Montluc Fort before being executed by Barbie's Gestapo on November 24, 1943, at the Gestapo building, the military Ecole de Santé. The second son, Alexandre, found his father at the morgue, his body riddled with seventeen submachine gun bullets. Léon was transferred to Drancy and deported to Auschwitz on December 17, 1943, on convoy 63. Impoverished, Madame Halaunbrenner had to give up Mina and Claudine to the OSE, which sent them to the children's home in Izieu. She kept with her little Monique and Alexandre. Mina and Claudine were deported two and a half months after most of the other Izieu children. They left for Auschwitz on convoy 76 of June 30, 1944. Alexandre devotedly keeps alive the memory of the four members of his family murdered by the Nazi anti-Jewish racism. Madame Halaunbrenner played an important part in actions in Bolivia with Beate Klarsfeld in 1972, in the campaign to extradite Klaus Barbie.