Who was Maurice Wajsfelner ? Two students explain
The best way of knowing who Maurice Wajsfelner was is to listen to
Amandine SELHUM and Mariem EBBOU, two ninth grade students from the
secular high school
which bears his name. Their speech was read out during a national
meeting or the ARAC (the Republican Association of War Veterans ) in
the Town Hall square in Crouy, in front of assembled inhabitants of the
town, together with war veterans and youngsters from the high chool, on
May 24th, 1997.
“We are here
today with the ARAC to
commemorate the two world wars. During World War 2, the nazis were
responsible for great devastation. The deportation of thousands to the
death camps will stay for ever deeply etched in people’s
minds . Among
all those who were deported, we will tell you today about a child,
Maurice Wajsfelner, who was not yet eleven years old when it happened
to him.
He was jewish and lived
in Crouy. He
went to the Town Hall primary school, and was about to start his first
year in high school. He was born in June 1933, the year when Hitler
came to power in Germany.
After After WW 1, his
parents had
emigrated from Poland, and settled in Crouy around 1934-35. In 1940,
France was occupied by the nazi army. In 1942, the deportations
started. The nazis and those who collaborated with them started a
“manhunt”.
The Wajsfelners had moved
from the
café called today “le petit Vatel” to go
and live in the Rue
Saint Quentin in Soissons. Maurice’s mother was arrested on
July 17th,
1942, at 6 a.m. His father fled by climbing on to the roof. The French
police didn ‘t arrest Maurice, probably because they thought
he was too
young: at the time, he was only nine years old. Meanwhile,
Maurice’s
older brother, Charles, was in the Free (non occupied) zone of France.
His father made him return to Soissons. He persuaded him to go with him
to the gendarmerie to find his mother. Charles was reluctant but
finally accepted. They were sent to Drancy (a holding camp in France),
then put in a convoy that arrived on July 29th, 1942 at Auschwitz where
they met a terrible death.
As for Maurice, he stayed
with his
aunt and his cousin who, up to then , were living in the same flat as
the Wajsfelners. We do not know what Maurice did during the one and a
half years of his life. But what we can be sure of is that Maurice did
not have the normal life of a ten year old, which he was entitled to.
We can imagine that he didn’t have fun in the way that ten
year old
children can have fun today .
In January 1944, the
Gestapo came to
fetch Maurice and the Gochperg family who were giving him shelter. They
were sent to the camp in Drancy, and from there to their deaths in
Auschwitz. The small daughter of the Gochpergs was among them. She was
only four years old, and was not spared.
How can one extinguish
the lives of
thousands of people, without even any sense of shame?
We, the young, cannot
understand how
neo nazis today can still believe in ideologies of this kind. How can
they wish to start everything again, in the same way as fifty years
ago? Have they forgotten this tragedy ? Or do they simply not want to
think about it ? And yet, these things did happen, and it’s
already a
crime not to be conscious of it or, as some do, to say that it was a
mere detail !
Fortunately, the number
of people
assembled here today shows that many certainly don’t want to
forget,
and don’t want to live through it again ! “
In
1990, the secular high
school in Cuffies, near Soissons, was named Maurice Wajsfelner High
School. The school’s principal, Mrs Sylvette Calloni,
addressed the
students of the school in 1990 telling them that this name meant
“a
commitment for all of you, because you now carry a memory”.
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