André Elbogen

Origins and early life

André Elbogen was born at Hajdúnánás in Hungary on 17 January 1922 and was shot at Saint-Genest-Lerpt, in the Loire, on 7 July 1944, at the age of twenty-two; the sources describe him as an Orthodox French Jew of Hungarian origin.

Work and career

He was a science student at the University of Strasbourg, which had been evacuated to Clermont-Ferrand when Alsace was annexed by the Reich. He joined the Armée juive, the Jewish resistance organisation founded at Toulouse in 1942 that armed and trained young Jews and smuggled others across the Spanish border, and he fought under the cover name Alain Eude. From 1943 he took part in actions with the corps franc of the Montagne noire.

On 5 July 1943 he married Madeleine Klein, a fellow student, who was arrested that November and murdered at Auschwitz. He was himself arrested by the Gestapo at a railway station in Saint-Étienne on 5 July 1944, betrayed by an informer, and executed two days later. His name and that of his wife are inscribed on the memorial plaque of the University of Strasbourg to those killed between 1939 and 1945.