Gert Alexander (M / Germany, 1927), Holocaust survivor

Gert Alexander (M / Germany, 1927), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Refugees> <France> <Chateau de Quincy> <Chateau de Chabannes>

Biography

Gert (Gerhard, Gérard) Alexander was born March 8, 1927 in Berlin, Germany. He was placed by parents in a children’s home in Berlin 1938. He left for Paris with a Kindertransport consisting largely of children from the Auerbach Orphanage in Berlin. He stayed at the Chateau de Quincy and later at the Chateau de Chabannes.

USHMM

Gert Alexander, born 40 km from Berlin, Germany on March 8, 1927, discusses his life events; the OSE (OEuvre de secours aux enfants) altering his birth year for documents; being on the OSE convoy of children from Berlin to Switzerland, which was the last legal convoy allowed by Nazis; being stopped at Annemasse, France by Italians with 12 other children (each child was carrying a forged and a real identity card); being transferred to Hôtel Pax; how when Italians stopped the convoy, he tore up his French ID card; being turned over to French police; being relocated to a children’s home while the OSE organized departures; being transferred first to Geneva and later to Paris and eventually to Chabannes; (Gert deviates from chronology to explain that he was placed by parents in a children’s home in Berlin 1938); serendipitously securing OSE passage to Paris to a chateau in Quincy-sous-Sénart (30 km south of Paris); the owner of the chateau, Count Hubert Conquere de Monbrison, who had agreed in response to his children’s Jewish doctor and OSE board member to hide refugee children; staying at Quincy-sous-Sénart until September 1940; being transferred to a Quaker children’s home near Porte des Lilas in Paris; being provided with identity papers indicating they were under Quaker protection; being able to venture around Paris and go to school without great risk until the Americans entered the war, at which time they were transferred to Chabannes in 1941; life in Chabannes; learning a leather trade and participating in sports events; education in the chateau; the difficult winter and illness at the chateau; going to school; the absence of fear; the deportation of his parents from Berlin to Theresienstadt and later to Auschwitz where they were murdered; and the photos, letters, and documents confirming his parents’ murder at Auschwitz (Gert shows these materials during the interview).

Sources

• Confirmed: <USHMM> <AJPN>