André Baur

Origins and early life

André Baur was born in Paris on 18 March 1904, son of Charles Robert Baur and Rachel Weill, and nephew of Julien Weill, chief rabbi of Paris.

Work and career

A banker by profession, he was president of the Union libérale israélite de France, the liberal Jewish congregation of the rue Copernic, and when the occupier imposed the UGIF, the single Jewish organisation through which French Jewry was to be administered, he became vice-president for the northern zone. That office has been argued over ever since: the UGIF ran canteens, orphanages and dispensaries that kept thousands alive, and it also held lists and children's homes that the Gestapo used.

Baur believed he could protect more from inside than outside, wrote protest after protest to the authorities, and was arrested in July 1943 for refusing further compliance. He was held at Drancy and deported by convoy 63 on 17 December 1943 with his wife Odette Kahn and their four children, Pierre, Myriam, Antoine and Francine; the convoy carried 501 men, 345 women and 99 children under eighteen. He was murdered at Auschwitz in April 1944, at forty.

His family was destroyed with him, which is the plainest answer to the question of what his office ultimately protected.