Thursday 30 July 2015

Germaine Davys

Today is the 100th birthday of my mother’s first cousin, Germaine Davys. Germaine was murdered in 1944, as she – according to an eyewitness – tried to flee from Auschwitz. She was born in Bucharest, had apparently been an active youth leader in the communist cell in Bucharest before leaving for Paris to study for her doctorate in philosophy at the Sorbonne.

In 1942, she was arrested by the French police, who at the behest of the German authorities rounded up Jews and delivered them to the SS for deportation to Auschwitz. 

Her mother, my great-aunt Feli, told me how for years, whenever she heard steps in the Garden, she would instinctively look out hoping that it was Germaine who had survived and come back.


  This portrait of Germaine 
hung in my great-aunt Feli’s small flat in Tel Aviv.

7 comments:

  1. It so good that you write about stories like the one of your aunt Germaine Davys. The more we know about that terrible time - the more we have to make sure that it should never, ever happen again - das klingt so platt - so blöd - Es ist ein Thema, das mich nie los lässt.....
    Warum????

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  2. Great to have access to your blog again.
    Thanks especially for the story of your cousin.

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  3. Great honour to know something of your aunt germaine.touches my heart and soul.

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  4. Thanks for giving more details about jarmaine that I didn't know about her Especially that now is her 100th birthday and more other details.

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  6. So glad you paid tribute to your cousin (and my distant relative) Germaine Davys. She seems to have been a remarkable women with so much to offer if she hadn't been murdered.

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