Berger Maurice

Berger, Maurice File 7042 Maurice Berger, a Gendarmerie officer in Riom (département of Puy-de-Dôme), was active in the O.R.A. (Organisation de Resistance de l’Armée). In 1934, Herbert Herz was a boy when he and his family fled from Germany to France. The Herzes settled in Dijon but, upon the defeat of France in June 1940, fled to the southern zone and resettled in Châteauneuf-les-Bains at the demand of the authorities. Herz attended a boarding school in nearby Riom and returned to his parents’ home in July 1942, after completing matriculation examinations. On the evening of August 26, French police raided the homes of Jews in Châteauneuf-les-Bains and conducted many arrests, but the Herz family was spared. That day, Herbert Herz had bicycled to Riom to renew his identity card; on his way back he was arrested and taken to the police station in Riom. He was dressed in light clothing, and the police allowed him to call home and ask for a suitcase with clothes. There were no cells in the station for overnight detentions, and so Herz was taken on foot, pushing his bicycle, to the police station in downtown Riom. As they passed a bakery, Herz asked permission to buy bread. The bakery owner recognized him, sized up the situation, and sold him bread without a ration card. Shortly after Herz reached the police station, the station commander called him over and said, “Young man, I want to release you. You must forget where you were this evening and say nothing to anyone about it. Make sure I never see you again.” Herz leaped onto his bicycle and rushed home. The station commander was Maurice Berger, who had received a phone call that evening from Herz’s high school principal, who had discovered from the bakery owner that his student had been arrested. In December 1942, in defiance of his superiors’ orders, Berger also rescued eight members of the family of a tailor named Wajsbrot, who had fled from Paris to the small village of Davayat (département of Puy-de-Dôme), byhaving his secretary warn them of an impending roundup of Jews the next morning. The Germans discovered the names of Berger and eighteen colleagues on lists of Resistance members who were captured in a raid on underground headquarters. Berger was arrested and sent to the east. Maurice Berger was broken by the physical and mental tortures that he underwent in camps in Poland and Czechoslovakia. He died of typhus on April 27, 1945, just one day before his camp was liberated. On March 12, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Maurice Berger as Righteous Among the Nations.