My grandfather, Chaskel Krameisen was born in Sieniawa, in Austrian Galicia, in 1901. He moved to Metz in the early 1920s where he married my grandmother, Machla Kupferman (who was also born in Sieniawa) in 1924. They had two children---Amélie in 1926 followed by my father four years later. The economic conditions related to the crisis of 1929 led them to settle in Bouzonville in France, three kilometers from the German border. They had Polish passports as Galicia came under the control of Poland around 1920.

 

 

In September 1939, the family was forced to evacuate Bouzonville in order to find what they thought would be refuge in the center of France Saint-Amand-Montrond in the Berry. They chose this town arbitrarily thinking that it was in the very center of France and thus protected from the enemies surrounding the country. Saint-Amand was still in the unoccupied zone until November 1942, but the laws of anti-Jewish discrimination did not spare them. The years of occupation were terrible for the entire French Jewish community but especially for these Jews of foreign origin.

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The worst was yet to come.

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D-day on June 6th, 1944 led to the retreat of the Nazi soldiers across France, yet their blood hunger for Jews remained unquenched. On the night of July 21st to 22nd 1944, French militia and Gestapo broke into my grandparents' home to arrest them brutally. With them, more than 70 people---men, women, children, and old men---were led cruelly to the prison of Bordiot de Bourges.

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My aunt and father only survived thanks to the wary predictions of my grandmother, who had placed them in two separate families of peasants living on the outskirts of the city on June 8th.

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On July 23rd, twenty-six men were removed from their cells to be driven by truck to the sinister Guerry water wells. In groups of six, escorted by armed guards, they were taken to be thrown alive into the wells, which were over 35 meters deep. Heavy stones, bags of cement, and incendiary grenades were then thrown over the unfortunate victims.

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In a fit of heroic courage, my grandfather managed to escape under the bullets. He argued with his mate in the group that they should run for it. The man feared being shot if they tried to escape. My grandfather told him boldly that they were going to be shot dead anyway and thus he ran, being shot at as he escaped into the forest, left for dead by the Nazi soldiers. He held up there through the night, then ran through the fields towards refuge.

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In his desperate flight to escape the stalking launched by the feldgendarmerie, my grandfather found refuge in a family of Righteous, the Guillaumins who welcomed him, bandaged his wounds and then fed him before transferring him to another family of Righteous, the Baugers.

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Three other men were tortured then killed on this site before 8 women, including my grandmother, Machla Krameisen, were savagely tortured and then murdered August 8th, 1944. The Germans evacuated Bourges on August 9th.

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The Yad Vashem Memorial of Israel came to France in 2014 and with the Israeli Ambassador to France awarded the Medal of the Just Among the Nations to the now elderly children and grandchildren of the Bauger and Guilllaumin families. Charles Krameisen died in 1974. His son, Henri Krameisen, now age 88, lives outside of Paris with his wife, Anna. He is the father of three sons and has four grandsons.