RESISTANCE HERO DIES AT 108
A HERO of the French Resistance who saved 350 Jews from the Nazis has died.
Georges Loinger, who was 108, is said to have saved hundreds of children after he escaped the Nazis who captured him during the German invasion of France, when he was a French Army soldier.
One of his rescue methods was to take children to an unguarded section of the Swiss border to play a ball game, then kick it towards the fence.
In an interview with The Tablet earlier this year, he said: “I threw a ball a hundred metres towards the Swiss border and told the children to run and get the ball. They ran after the ball and this is how they crossed the border.”
Mr Loinger was Jewish, born in Strasbourg in 1910. He claimed the fact he did not look Jewish allowed him to move around without suspicion.
He said: “Sport made me the opposite of an anguished Jew... I walked with great naturalness. Besides, I was rather pretty and therefore well-dressed.”
His heroism won him the Resistance Medal, the Military Cross and the Legion d’Honneur after the war.
His cousin was mime artist and fellow Resistance fighter Marcel Marceau.
Sacha Ghozlan, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France, tweeted: “He saved hundreds of Jewish children from Nazi barbarity by secretly passing them to Switzerland.
“May his memory enlighten our commitment.”