Albert Garih

Albert Garih and his twin brother were born June 24, 1938, in Paris, France. Albert’s twin died in infancy. Their parents, Benjamin and Claire (née Alfandary) Garih, were Natives of Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). They had each moved to Paris in 1923, where they met and married in 1928. Benjamin worked in a garment factory. The family lived in the janitor’s house at the factory, where Claire stayed home taking care of Albert and his two older sisters, Jacqueline, and Gilberte, born in 1930 and 1933 respectively.

In May 1940, Germany invaded France. In June, they occupied Paris. Many people fled the city ahead of the advancing Germans. Albert, his mother and sisters headed south without any specific destination. They spent several nights in a chateau along the Loire River, sleeping on the floor. With no destination however, they soon returned to Paris, where they were subjected to new German and French anti-Jewish measures. In July 1942, the Garihs were forced to move into a two-room apartment with no bathroom or shower; only a toilet and tiny kitchen. That same month, on German orders, the Parisian police arrested some 13,000 Jewish men, women, and children. Luckily, the Garihs avoided the roundup. 

In October 1943, the German authorities arrested Albert’s father, Benjamin. They deported him from the Drancy transit camp to a forced labor camp in the Channel Islands, the only British territories occupied by the Axis powers. Shortly after Benjamin’s departure, Claire confessed to Aimée Galop, a woman she had met at the market, that she feared being taken away with her children. Madame Galop and her husband Gabriel invited Claire and her children to stay with them. They hid with the Galops for more than six months during 1943 and 1944. When a neighbor threatened to denounce them to the German authorities, Claire and her children returned home.

In June 1944, two French police inspectors came to their door. Though they had been instructed to arrest the Garihs, the police agreed to report that they were not home if the family left immediately. Claire and Albert spent the next few nights hiding with their Communist neighbors, Robert and Suzanne Ménétrier. Jacqueline and Gilberte hid on the ground floor of their building with the janitor.

With the help of a local social worker, the Garihs found places to hide. Claire worked as a governess for a Parisian family. Albert was placed in a Catholic boarding school for boys. His sisters were placed in one for girls, both in the northeastern suburb of Montfermeil. The children had no way of communicating with their mother. Though Albert was protected by the headmistress—he suspects she knew he was Jewish—he became incredibly thin and weak from the scarcity of food during wartime.

In August 1944, the Allied powers liberated Paris and then Montfermeil shortly thereafter. As soon as the train service was restored, Claire went to Montfermeil and brought her children back to Paris.

They waited for Albert’s father to return. In May 1944, a month before D-Day, German authorities had evacuated some of the prisoners to France. This included Benjamin, who was detained on the Channel Island of Alderney. They were transported via Cherbourg to northern France, near Boulogne. They were deployed as forced laborers in the Boulogne-Calais-Dunkerque triangle, repairing German coastal fortification installations damaged by Allied bombing. In August, shortly after the Allies broke out of the Normandy beachhead and began their rapid sweep through France, the Germans had intended to transport these Jews to concentration camps in Germany. But members of the Belgian resistance stopped the train and liberated the remaining prisoners, including Benjamin. Benjamin walked back home from Dixmude, Belgium, to Paris. He arrived on the morning of the Jewish New Year, 1944.

In 1962 Albert received a degree in English and Spanish to French translation from the School of Advanced Translation and Interpretation Studies at the Sorbonne. In 1967 he married Marcelle Ohayon, with whom he has three daughters and 10 grandchildren. He has worked as a translator at several major organizations, including for the president of Cameroon; a UN agency in Montreal; and the World Bank, which brought him to Washington, DC in 1976.

In 1992, through Albert’s application, Yad Vashem recognized the Galops and the Ménétriers as Righteous Among the Nations. Today Albert serves as a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.