Alexander Glasberg

Nick Lampert ALEXANDER GLASBERG (1902-1981) Résistant, social pioneer, maverick priest Contents Preface Comment on sources Acknowledgements Chronology of events 1. The Glasberg family : the early years 2. Settling in France and ordination (1932-1938) 3. To the rescue of refugees : the ‘Juggler of Notre Dame » (1940-1942) 4. From assistance to resistance : Direction des Centres d'Accueil (1941-1942) 5. The round-ups, Amitié Chrétienne and the drama of Vénissieux (summer 1942) 6. The Centres d'Accueil in crisis (1942-1943) 7. Curé and résistant in Honor-de-Cos (1943-1944) 8. Centre d’Orientation Sociale 9. The abbé, Palestine et Israël 10. The quest for French nationality 11. France Terre d’Asile 12. The brothers Glasberg : Righteous among the Nations 13. The enigma of Alexandre Glasberg ? Bibliography Sources of photos 1 “We fail through ignorance, through laziness of mind, through opportunism; we succeed when we take as our point of departure respect for the human being.” Alexandre Glasberg, A la recherche d’une patrie (1946), Preface “Do everthing you can for people, but never act in their place.” Alexandre Glasberg “To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems an unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when you lay down your stone, that you are contributing to building the world.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des Hommes. (A quotation prominently displayed among the papers of Alexander Glasberg in the COS archive) “I said that Abbé Glasberg must have been welcomed in Paradise by a huge crowd of the disinherited and the persecuted whom he helped with so much perseverance, and that they would have sung for him happy hymns of welcome in all the languages that he knew so well, and even in Yiddish because who would dare any longer to exclude Yiddish from the celestial choir? ” Jean-Marie Soutou, Un diplomate engagé (2011), p.29 2 PREFACE This book tells the story of Alexander Glasberg, a diaries or memoirs and very few letters, and was remarkable great uncle, younger brother of my not given to reflect on his life and work, in grandmother Tatyana Lampert. particular on his decision to become a Catholic priest. He was born in 1902 into a Russian-speaking Jewish family in western Ukraine, then part of the There is therefore little to rely on in the way of Russian empire. He left Russia in 1920 and, after conventional biographical material and this an unstable period in various European countries, account cannot pretend to unravel all the settled in France in 1932. He trained in a Catholic unkowns about him. Yet he made a powerful seminary in Lyon and was ordained in 1938. After impression on the people he worked with and the German invasion of France in 1940, the helped, in the course of his courageous support of country was divided into an occupied north and Jewish and other refugees in Vichy France, his an unoccupied south under the Vichy government involvement with the French Resistance, and for which retained some independence from the many years after the war as a social innovator. German authorities but collaborated with them. We have the testimony of others and can convey Between 1940 and 1942 Abbé Glasberg, based in key moments of his extraordinary life and some a parish in Lyon in the unoccupied zone, worked aspects of his intriguing personality. tirelessly on behalf of refugees, Jewish and non- Jewish, who had fled there from fascist regimes. I have vivid memories of abbé Glasberg from my When the German army occupied the whole of youth. Within my family circle he was called France in November 1942, he was wanted by the Shura, one of the Russian diminutives of Gestapo and sought refuge in a small parish in Alexander. Shura was a name to conjure with. My south-west France under an assumed name. Here grandmother Tatyana, like Shura, settled in he joined the local Resistance. France in the early 1930s, and after the war they were both living in Paris. They were not especially After the Liberation of France in 1944, he set up close, but we (my father, mother, brother and I) the Centre d’Orientation Sociale (Centre for Social would see him during family trips to Paris in the Orientation) to help refugees who wanted to find 1950s. Later he made the occasional appearance their feet in France after the traumas of the in Oxford, where we lived and to which my second world war. This work evolved into a grandmother had moved at the end of the 1950s number of pioneering social projects: homes for in order to be near to my father. the elderly, facilities for the disabled and reception centres for asylum-seekers. Through Shura was a commanding presence, he filled the forty years of activity from the beginning of the room. His impressive physical dimensions helped, 1940s to the end of the 1970s, abbé Glasberg, but there was something else: he exuded a sense as he was known in France, remained loyal to a of self-contained authority, not lessened by central project: to find a place of welcome in extreme short-sightedness: he wore the thickest French society for the marginalised and excluded. spectacles, and could read only by removing These centres were informed by a radical ethic of them and holding a text right up to his face. He social work, based on complete respect for the would stare at us impassively for a while, then all dignity of the person, promotion of a maximum of a sudden a wicked grin would appear and he autonomy, and building bridges between the would enter into animated conversation. centres and the outside world. In each case they were funded by international bodies or the French The strength of his personality enabled abbé state, with no connection to the Church. And he Glasberg to maintain a striking independence in left a great heritage since the Centre relation to the Church hierarchy and anyone else d’Orientation Sociale, now known simply as COS, who might seek to influence him. It also helped remains alive and well today, greatly expanded him to sustain an aura of impenetrability which yet pursuing the same ideals which inspired its many have commented on. He was greatly foundation. admired, yet hard to fathom. Alexander Glasberg was a fascinating figure. He My purpose has been to tell a story, to leave a was a free spirit who defies all attempts at record, however patchy, that people can turn to, categorisation. He was a Jewish émigré who especially my family and descendants. At the became a Catholic priest, and a priest who same time his message has a big resonance in cherished the secular ideals of the French state. the face of the refugee crisis facing the world He was an ardent Francophile and a passionate today, and he deserves to be known to a wider defender of the rights of foreigners, a socialist public. who resisted ideologies, a Zionist who recoiled against all forms of nationalism, a friend of Israel The book has provided an opportunity to pay yet a staunch defender of the Palestinian people. homage also to another great uncle, Alexander And on a personal level he was at once very Glasberg’s younger brother Victor (1907- sociable and very private. c.1944), who worked closely with the abbé during the war. He played a much more low-key role, In the light of this extraordinary combination of but unlike Alexander did not survive the horrors elements, it is hardly surprising that Alexander of Nazism. He was arrested by the Gestapo in Glasberg is often seen as an enigma. And he August 1943, deported and never seen again. contributed to this perception by his silence on many things. He left few written records, no Nick Lampert 3 A Comment on Sources In 2012 a number of French historians assembled Gourfinkel met the abbé in 1940 and collaborated in Lyon for a commemorative conference on closely with him during and after the war. She Alexander Glasberg. The event was inspired by was a brilliant commentator on her times, a Roger Millot, then honorary president of the woman of remarkable intellect and honesty, and Centre d’Orientation Sociale, while the conference provides vivid testimony about the man whom was coordinated by Professor Christian Sorrel, she described as the ‘Juggler of Notre Dame’. She who also made important contributions to it and is a star witness in particular for the events edited the proceedings under the title Alexandre described in chapters 4 and 5. This does not Glasberg 1902-1981. Prêtre, Résistant, Militant mean that everything she says can be taken at (2013). I have drawn on this collection a great face value—after all it was a memoir—but she deal. I have in particular borrowed the work of was writing in the early 1950s, not so long after Christian Sorrel in chapters 2 and 10, Norbert the events, and where it is possible to check Sabatié in chapter 7, and Cindy Banse in chapter against other sources her memory comes out 12. Wherever I have borrowed material in this well. way it is clearly indicated at the start of the relevant chapter. For the rest the bibliography provides a list of the sources used. Internet sites, which have been I would also like to make special mention of Nina very important, are not included in the Gourfinkel’s memoir L’Autre Patrie, sections of bibliography, but references to these may be which are devoted to Alexander Glasberg.

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