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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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French Resistance hero Georges Loinger, who used his ingenuity and athletic prowess to save the lives of hundreds of Jewish children during World War II, has died at the age of 108.
A talented athlete and cousin of the famous mime artist and fellow Resistance member Marcel Marceau, the Jewish Loinger would smuggle the children in small groups across the Franco-Swiss border.
One ruse involved dressing children up as mourners and taking them to a cemetery whose wall abutted the French side of the border
With the help of a gravedigger’s ladder the “mourners” would clamber over the wall and head for the border just feet away.
Loinger, who was awarded the Resistance Medal, the Military Cross and the Legion of Honour, was born in Strasbourg in 1910.
In 1940 while serving with the French army, he was taken prisoner by German forces and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Germany.
Due to his blond hair and blue eyes, his captors did not suspect that he was Jewish and he managed to escape and return to France and join the OSE.
Between April 1943 and June 1944, OSE workers and other rescuers helped hundreds of children escape to Switzerland across the lightly-guarded border. Loinger alone is credited with saving at least 350 children.
Recalling his wartime efforts in an interview published earlier this year, Loinger said he would train the children to run before telling them they were going to play ball near the border.
“I threw the ball a hundred meters toward the Swiss border and told the children to run and get the ball. They ran after the ball and this is how they crossed the border,”
A true hero in every sense of the word.
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There are a lot of stories like these where there are so many heros. The kinder express is another. If your interested you should go to the holocaust memorial in the east midlands. Its not just about the jews but everyond who lost their lives. The gardens are beautiful but so sad. I sponser the gardens. It was quite trauatic.
My partner is jewish |
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