Lucien Dreyfus papers

Lucien Dreyfus (1882-1943) was born in Westhouse, France (at the time, Westhausen, Germany) to Jonas and Rose (Levy) Dreyfus. His education included rabbinical training in Colmar, Bouxwiller, and Berlin, and he received degrees in history and languages. He pursued a career in education, first as a professor at the Saint-Jean and later Kléber high schools in Strasbourg. He and his wife Marthe (1883-1943, born in Benfeld, France) had one daughter, Mariette (1914-1999). Mariette married Jacques Schumacher (1907-1962), son of the high rabbi of Nice, and had one daughter, Monique, in 1936. Lucien wrote numerous articles in major newspapers, Zionist reviews, and Jewish community publications, and he denounced the rise of Nazism and the influence of fascism in Alsace. Following the evacuation of Strasbourg in 1939, he was granted teaching positions in Poitiers and then Nice, but he was fired following the Jewish statutes of October 1940. He began working at the ORT school in Nice, his son-in-law worked for the Comité d’assistance aux refugiés (CAR), and his daughter worked for the Unitarian Service Committee in Marseilles. His daughter’s family immigrated to the United States from Casablanca aboard the Serpa Pinto in June 1942. They accompanied a Quaker-organized transport of refugee children and settled in Iowa. Lucien and his wife moved to Clans in the French Alps in summer 1943. They were arrested on October 25, 1943, transferred to Gestapo headquarters in Nice for one night and then to Drancy. They were deported on November 20, 1943 to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.