Saviour of more than 350 Jewish children dies, 108

A Jew who saved hundreds of Jewish children from the Nazi death camps during the Second World War has died at the age of 108.
Georges Loinger was born in Strasbourg and joined the French resistance after escaping from a prisoner of war camp as a French soldier in 1940.
A talented athlete with blonde hair and blue eyes, the Germans did not realise Loinger was Jewish and he managed to escape the camp and return to France.
He then joined the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE), a charity for Jewish children founded in St Petersburg in 1912.
Loinger’s cousin was also a resistance fighter, the mime artist Marcel Marceau.
Between April 1943 and June 1944, members of the OSE helped hundreds of children flee to Switzerland through the lightly guarded French border.
He said: “I spotted a football pitch that was on the border. It was made up of fences 2½ metres high. I saw that there was nobody.
“I made the children play, I told some of them to lift up the fences and I passed the ball.”
Loinger also told Tablet magazine this year: “I threw a ball 100 metres towards 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.”
There was also another tactic that involved him dressing the children as mourners and taking them to a cemetery near the Swiss border where they would climb a gravedigger’s ladder to neutral territory.
Loinger arranged for Jean Deffaugt, the mayor of a French border town, to shelter the children until it was time for them to make their escape.
Guides were paid to help the children navigate the border hills.
He was quoted saying by Tribune Juive that his success in saving children was “because I did not look Jewish”.
“Sport made me the opposite of an anguished Jew,” Loinger said.
“I walked with great naturalness. Besides, I was rather pretty and therefore well-dressed.”
Le Monde said the children’s arrival near the border was done under the pretext of visiting a summer camp.
Loinger reportedly saved at least 350 children, many of whom had lost their parents to the Nazis.
Around 75,000 Jews, including children, were deported from France, in most cases with the cooperation of the Vichy authorities.
Loinger received the Resistance Medal, the Military Cross and the Legion d’Honneur for his heroism.
The Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust called him exceptional.
Sacha Ghozlan, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France, tweeted: “Resistant Jew, he saved hundreds of Jewish children from Nazi barbarity by secretly passing them to Switzerland.”

French Jews were rounded up by the Vichy authorities. Picture credit: Wikimedia