Albert Benjamin Mendelbaum

Albert Mendelbaum was born to Jewish Russian immigrant parents on December 26^th 1887 in Sieldle, a suburb of Warsaw. His date of birth cannot be completely confirmed as the birth was not registered. This is because his parents were forced to flee Poland when he was a very young, due to the persecution of Russians immigrants. Albert’s parents brought him, along with his brother and sister, to Paris, where they grew up.

Albert and Aimée met on a busy train platform in Paris before WWII. She dropped something she was carrying and when she stooped to pick it up, the string of pearls she was wearing around her neck broke. Albert stepped forward to help her pick up the pearls and, as their niece recounts, it was love at first sight. Albert and Aimée were subsequently married and, during the Second World War, Albert and Aimée bought a business in Avranche, France, where she was originally from. They had to buy the business using Aimée’s sister Juliette’s name, as the ownership of businesses was forbidden for Jews under the laws of the German occupation. The family were denounced to the Germans in July 1942. Both Abert and Aimée were arrested on July 21^st and sent to St Lô, where he was condemned to hard labour. On September 1^st 1942, Albert was transported to Drancy Camp, where he became a slave labourer until July 10^th 1943. He was then deported to Alderney and remained a prisoner at Norderney camp until May 1944.

In early June 1944, as Albert was being transferred between trains at Boulogne-sur-Mer to travel to Auschwitz, he escaped with the assistance of communist railway workers. They reached Paris on June 8^th 1944. Albert hid at 9 Rue de Turenne until the liberation of Paris. When he and Aimée were reunited after the war, they continued their life together until Albert died in 1956, at the age of 71. Aimée died in the 1970s.

Source:

Dominick Chabaud Talvat, grand nephew of Albert Mendelbaum