It was 1910 when, in the city of Nancy, France, a Jewish family from Lorraine, whose traces were lost in the depths of the 17th century, welcomed its new member.
Alex Mayer grew up in Lineville, where he later developed a commercial activity, while at the age of 20 he served his military service in Algeria.
When World War II broke out, he was drafted and assigned to the 15th Engineer Corps as a telephone switchboard operator. He displayed unparalleled courage during the German bombing of Arsy-sur-Oube and received an honorary military decoration for his actions, and was discharged in Vichy, where he found work as a telephone switchboard operator in the War Ministry. A position from which, however, he was removed when the anti-Jewish laws began to be implemented.
The story of a Jewish family
Now considered persona non grata in Vichy and therefore likely to be arrested at any time, he decided to go into hiding to care for his mother, who (alone and deaf) had found refuge with a family in La Palisade. Working as a night watchman in a small hotel, he managed to hide for several years without changing his identity, but on June 17, 1944, he was betrayed, arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Drancy camp (a camp initially for the detention and then for the transit of prisoners, mainly Jews, in the Paris suburb of the same name, during the period 1941-1944).
He was deported from Drancy to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp on Convoy 77, the last train, which departed from Bobigny station on July 31, 1944. Along with him, 1.305 other people were on the train, with the youngest being just 15 days old and the oldest 87 years old. Among them were 19 people who had been born in Greece and who mostly left the country in the 20s and 30s to settle in France. The 18 were originally from Thessaloniki and one from Rhodes.
Alex Mayer for "Convoi 77"
Alex Mayer's story, as told by himself in a diary he wrote immediately after liberation, was also the tip of the thread from which the thread of the "Convoi 77" initiative began to unravel. This is a European project inspired by the diary of his father, Georges Mayer, and which teaches the history of the Holocaust and World War II in general in a different, deeply human way, emphasizing the personal stories of all those who experienced the brutality firsthand.
"My father died a long time ago, nearly 40 years have passed. Since then, I have been thinking about what I, as the son of a survivor, can do to keep the memory alive. My father wrote a diary immediately after the liberation, which has been published as a book in French, Hebrew and Polish, and it made me deal with the subject," explains Zor Mayer, who was in Thessaloniki, one of the European cities where the project is underway, to the Athenian/Macedonian News Agency.
"Convoi 77" was presented at an event organized with the assistance of the French Institute of Thessaloniki (and in particular the educational cooperation department), in the Allatini - Dassault room, in the presence of the Consul General of France in Thessaloniki, Jean-Luc Laveau, the German Consul, Paul Isaac Howell from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, members of the university community, etc.
The role of Alois Brunner and the children of orphanages
Convoy 77 was prepared with the collapse of the German army imminent, and a characteristic of the entire operation was the persistence - one might say almost obsession - of the notorious SS officer, Alois Brunner, in deporting children.
"Although the Nazis were losing the war - the Americans were 40 kilometers from Paris at that time - Alois Brunner decides to send one last train to Auschwitz. Because he did not have enough people to put on this mission, he grabbed about 300 children, Jewish children, from the orphanages located around the Paris area.
These were children whose parents had already been deported in previous years (1942-43). Children who had been placed in orphanages in the area, but were essentially in captivity. These children were collected from the orphanages on 21-22/7, about a week before the train departed, which had three peculiarities: it was the last large train to leave Paris, it carried children, and its passengers were born in 33 countries.
"So I created this project as an educational tool, to convey the memory of the Holocaust in another way to children who were born or will be born in the 21st century," Mr. Mayer tells APE-MPA.
Through "Convoi 77", young people from every corner of Europe are working on the biographies of the people who were on this train.
Georges Mayer collaborates with schools, providing primary historical records for each individual, while students and teachers bring unique human stories to the surface.
"My idea was very simple from the beginning: we wanted to propose to each of these 33 countries, to young people who lived in a city or a village from which even one of the people on the convoy came, to work in their classes on the biographies, the stories of the people who were on the train. So, what we wanted was to make history differently, not to talk in general about the millions of people who perished in the Holocaust, but to approach history through the life of a person who was born where they were born and those who participate in the project," notes Mr. Mayer.
This educational method has been "embrace" by thousands of students and teachers. Of the total 520 stories that have been collected, many have already been translated and published, while Greece - here the research focuses on the stories of the 19 passengers originating from Thessaloniki and Rhodes - along with Germany and France are the countries where the greatest progress has been made.
"The project in Thessaloniki began three years ago. To date, out of the 18 stories, we have completed eight and they have been posted on our website in French and English. Schools from Thessaloniki and France have worked on them.
"Four of the stories have already been translated into Greek," explains the originator of "Convoi 77" to APE-MPE.
He also explains that when the whole process begins, the teachers are provided with primary sources, which are documents and files from the central archives of France (either the Police or the Ministry of Defense at that time), which date back to before and after the war. The final form of the biography is studied by the project team, which, in case it identifies issues of historical inconsistency, returns it to the team, requesting the necessary clarifications.
"It's hard to face the horror"
Greek and French students and their teachers presented at the French Institute of Thessaloniki the evolution of writing biographies and spoke about their experience, about how difficult it is to face horror and explain it to teenagers.
The participating schools were the 1st Lyceum of Oreokastro, the 1st Lyceum of Panorama, the 1st Gymnasium of Ampelokipi, the 24th Lyceum of Thessaloniki, the 11th Gymnasium of Thessaloniki, the Lycée Victor Louis de Talence, as well as classes from schools in Athens.
In fact, the 1st Lyceum of Oreokastro and the Lycée Victor Louis de Talence collaborated on an Erasmus+ educational program, through which they co-authored the biography of Solomon Genis (also available in Greek: https://en.convoi77.org/deporte_bio/salomon-yeni/#bio-grec).
"I really liked this program because I learned about this history, about the people who were displaced, and it was very moving," Benoit, a student from France who came to Thessaloniki and, in addition to the project, also participated in the March 15 commemoration march, told ΑΠΕ-ΜΕΑ.
"We reconstructed the life course of these people and the process was fascinating. We saw that the Holocaust concerns us all, since it was people like us who were deported," said Kamil, while Anastasia, a student at a school in Thessaloniki, underlined the importance of young people's collaboration for a project of great historical significance.
"The project is now more important than ever"
The rise of anti-Semitism has often made Georges Mayer wonder what the project's ultimate value is and whether it is worth continuing.
"My colleagues and I finally came to the conclusion that now it is more important than ever to develop this type of project," says the initiator of "Convoi 77" and explains:
"First, why do we have to talk about the Holocaust, about the genocide, about the dangers that lie ahead for humanity, for the Jews, if we return to this kind of logic. Also, the fact that we make students responsible for an effective historical work helps them understand the history not only of their country but also of Europe.
"I'm becoming more and more convinced that not only should we continue it, but we should extend this kind of idea to other things. We should, perhaps, look again at the way history is taught, in Greece, France and elsewhere, and use this educational method that we use for "Convoi 77" to look at history today."
SOURCE: iefimerida.gr, 1.4.2025