Death of Thierry Brener

October 4, 2018

Thierry BRENER died on September 8, 2018, the eve of Rosh Hashanah, at the age of 71, following what is customarily called “a long illness”.

We met Thierry in 2015 on the occasion of an article in L’Express devoted to “the resisters of the 500 children” – the Marcel network, of course. We talked about the memory of his father Maurice, the discreet and little-known hero of the Resistance. Thierry was one of the creators of Club Méditerranée: first as a “GO” (Gentil Organisateur, for the uninitiated); then managing director for Great Britain and Ireland; later in general management for New Zealand; then managing director of Transports Calberson; then at the head of major companies; and finally president of SYNEG (the national trade association for large-scale kitchen equipment), which paid tribute to its President in these terms:

“Thierry BRENER will be remembered as an enterprising and determined man, a convinced European, a tireless defender and promoter of our industry, to which he helped give cohesion and a shared vision.”

In May 2016, he was guest of honour at our Association’s conference at the town hall of the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. His testimony about his father’s work, sober and moving, is a precious contribution to the history of the Resistance in France.

Maurice Brener, despite a severe disability – he had contracted polio as a child – was quick-witted and conciliatory, refined and discreet, a subtle and sensitive intellectual, far from the image of the fearless, valiant hero. Why does History remember his nom de guerre, “Zazou”? A mystery. Neither his appearance nor his behaviour suggested the young eccentrics of the time. His reserved manner and his always impeccable appearance suggested quite the opposite. He felt one hundred per cent French; it was persecution that made him understand he was Jewish.

In 1943 he was appointed delegate for the South of France of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (better known by its abbreviation, the “Joint”). The funds needed by the Jewish resistance organisations came mainly from Switzerland and France. He contacted donors, telling them: “We need money. We are asking you to lend it to us; we will record your name in our secret papers, of course. After the war, the Joint will repay you.” The sums collected were used to fund the various networks. The accounts were buried somewhere in the South of France, with copies in Spain, carried by the Resistance’s smugglers. Who were these generous donors? The rich, those who had managed to save their fortunes from the Nazis’ clutches? No – ordinary, decent, charitable people. They gave wholeheartedly, with astonishing generosity.

Keep half of it!

After the war, the Joint kept its word. The money was even returned to the heirs of those who had died. There was not a single dispute. When the Joint told the lenders that their money was available, some of them said: “Keep half of it! ”, amazed that the sums they had given were being returned to them so precisely.

At the beginning of the occupation of the southern zone, he helped hide and evacuate resisters from Marseille to the interior during the days when the Vieux-Port was being destroyed.

As the Joint’s delegate in Nice, Maurice Brener suggested to Moussa Abadi that he create a network to rescue Jewish children. The two men were drawn together by intellectual affinities. As soon as the Italians left, in September 1943, the network was operating. The Marcel network was born.

After the Liberation, Maurice Brener continued his work of relief for the surviving Jewish population, starving and bewildered. Captain Edward Warburg, son and successor of the first president of the Joint, visited him at the Paris headquarters and officially conferred on him the title of the Joint’s representative in France. The Jewish canteens of Paris were quickly supplied. Brener’s work in that troubled period was considerable. He obtained the funds needed to create and run many Jewish social organisations. It is estimated that 35,000 people received regular monthly aid from the Joint under Brener’s direction. The OSE was the largest beneficiary of the Joint’s grants.

As Anny Latour points out in her authoritative book on the subject (La résistance juive en France, Stock, 1970): “This is not the first time that the name of Maurice Brener has appeared in our account: every time a Jewish resistance group needed funds, it turned to him. First in the southern zone, later in Paris.”

Here, quickly sketched, are the portraits of father and son. The father, omnipresent in the history of the Second World War, serving the weak and the oppressed, often at the risk of his life, yet to whom no book has so far been devoted.

And the son, an engaging and erudite personality, with whom we reproach ourselves for not having spent more time. It was his daughter Fleur who told us of his death in this moving message:

I am Thierry Brener’s daughter; my name is Fleur.
My father left us on Saturday, the eve of Rosh Hashanah.
Among his belongings I found your letter about “the Marcel network” concerning my grandfather.
Keeping my family’s name in the light matters to me; if I can help you, I am at your disposal.

Victor Kuperminc