Involved in Cachan life for a long time, particularly as part of the Décidons notre ville movement, Gérard Najman, now 75 years old, is also the grandson of a deportee with no return. His own mother had to live in hiding after the Vel d’Hiv roundup of 16 and 17 July 1942. It was in 1996, when he was an opposition politician, that he suggested creating an exhibition to pass on the story to younger generations. In 1995, Jacques Chirac acknowledged the role of the French police in this roundup during a landmark speech. The exhibition project came to fruition in 2001, alongside a first commemoration in Cachan, when Gérard Najman became deputy mayor of Jean-Yves Le Bouillonnec. In 1998, Gérard Najman’s mother died, some time after being interviewed by the Shoah Survivors Audiovisual History Archive Foundation created by Steven Spielberg. “For a long time, she had only mentioned this period in bits and pieces; I had never had a linear explanation.”he remembers. The son then sees the puzzle coming together.
Gérard Najman will be signing his book, “Meeting of the Jewish Memory of Cachan with History” this Saturday, September 21 between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. at the Chroniques de Cachan bookstore, at 19 rue Camille Desmoulins. The book was published by the association Les ateliers du Val-de-Bièvre, with the support of the city.
The History of the Klapisch Family
At the turn of the 2000s, however, the issue of the deportation of the Jews of Cachan was poorly documented. It was somewhat by chance, in 2012, that Gérard Najman became aware of two cases of deportation. Then, in 2020, when physicist Robert Klapisch (the director’s father) born in the town in 1932 died, he was asked to pay tribute. Gérard Najman returned to the Internet to research the character… and dove in. “Between 2000 and 2020, the tools on the Internet had changed. Much more information was available.” Thus he discovers that the Klapisch family was also marked by deportation. While the three older brothers of Robert the physicist ran a flourishing fish smoking and salting business with their father on rue Camille Desmoulins, two of the brothers were deported, of whom only one would return. Arrested during the greenback roundup (the color of the summons) on May 14, 1941, Joseph Klapisch was interned in the Beaune-La-Rolande camp and then sent to Auschwitz in June 1942. Although he escaped death on his arrival, assigned to accounting tasks, he was murdered two months later, considered unfit for work after breaking his glasses. Gérard Najman documents this story by cross-referencing family testimonies and archives. To do this, he sent a detailed email to the director Cédric Klapisch who opened his notebook to him. He was thus able to directly interview Béatrice, Joseph’s daughter.
After this monograph, published by the association Ateliers du Val-de-Bièvre, which cultivates local history and heritage, Gérard Najman continues his research on the deportation of the Jews of Cachan based on the list drawn up by the Friends of the Foundation for the Memory of Deportation (AFMD). This association lists all the people deported, either for the purposes of repression, in particular for acts of resistance or refusal of STO (compulsory work service), or for the purposes of extermination, mainly Jews. The 2024 edition of this census by the Val-de-Marne delegation thus reports 1,570 deportees for repression and 1,207 deportees for extermination in the department. From this list, which he helps to update, Gérard Najman digs, cross-checks, searches for archives and testimonies. Contact is sometimes made easily, against all expectations, from a simple message left on a phone, without even being entirely sure that it is the right person. This is how he finds the granddaughter of Chaim Pliskin, delighted to share with him the interview she recorded of her father before he died, and thus to save this memory. He also finds a descendant of Berek Gerszenowicz who keeps a treasure trove of documents. Several archive services are also cooperative. Other times, it is more complicated, as with this family who emigrated to the United States, whose descendants are wary, fearing a commercial approach, or do not want to return to this tragic moment.
Little by little, the documentation is taking shape. “The lockdown helped me a lot at the beginning, because I had a lot of free time, without meetings”confides the former elected official, still involved in community life. What to do with this work as a historian? “It was the mayor of Cachan, Hélène de Comarmond, who encouraged me to publish.” The publisher was the obvious choice: the Ateliers du Val-de-Bièvre association. So, Gérard Najman put his notes in order, polished and organized his story. “I had my 16-year-old granddaughter read it again, because I absolutely wanted it to be readable for the new generation. This work is first and foremost part of a perspective of transmission.”
Throughout the pages, we see stories of life that are all romantic, such as that of Michel Krever, a sculptor and painter who was part of the artistic movement of the School of Paris, in Montparnasse at the beginning of the 20th century. Beyond these stories, all singular and touching, of people who, for the most part, fled Poland, Russia, and other Eastern countries, seeing France as a refuge, this collection goes beyond the memorial dimension to contextualize each deportation in the chronology of repressive measures. After having favored immigration at the end of the First World War, France toughened the conditions for naturalization, which would not be without consequences in the roundups and deportations, which would initially only concern foreigners from certain countries, then others, then the French. Then came the anti-Jewish measures from 1940, which became more and more stifling. The arrests of the 13 deportees studied by Gérard Najman also correspond to the great roundups, from the green ticket roundup to the roundup of Romanian Jews, then of Greek Jews… passing through the great roundup of the Vel d’Hiv, following which 4 Cachanais will be deported. A local story that tells the story of the world conflict and the French collaboration policy.
These former mayors of Cachan marked by history
The author also pays tribute to Léon Eyrolles, mayor from May 1929 to August 21, 1944. The founder of the École spéciale des travaux publics (ESTP) and of Eyrolles publishing house unwaveringly supported the requests for naturalization of his constituents and tacitly protected the resistance movement that was organized within the ESTP, under the leadership of director André Desguine. His wife, the artist Cécile Hertz, was interned for a time in Drancy for not having worn the yellow star during the inauguration of the Dumotel stadium in October 1942. Ironically, he was dismissed in August 1944 and even sentenced to death for “intelligence with the enemy” by the anti-Nazi organization French Anti-Axis Legions. This was for having put up a poster dissuading students from handing out calls for resistance, in reality to avoid attracting attention. He was released a few weeks later on the orders of Minister Alexandre Parodi.
The story of Jacques Carat (born Karaimsky), mayor from May 1953 to September 1998, is also marked by this period. He was mobilized in April 1940 and then interned in Germany as a prisoner of war, which ensured him the protection of the Geneva Convention. During this time, his family saw their clothing store Aryanized. They fortunately escaped the roundups, warned by customers.
Gérard Najman will be signing his book, “Meeting of the Jewish memory of Cachan with History” this Saturday, September 21 between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. at the Chroniques de Cachan bookstore, at 19 rue Camille Desmoulins.
