Heartwarming….
It had all started as a game. During World War II, when hundreds of Jewish children were hidden at chateaus in the French countryside, kept out of sight from the nation’s Nazi occupiers and Vichy collaborators, Georges Loinger entertained them with calisthenics, football matches and ball games.
Tall and athletic, Loinger was a Jewish engineer turned physical-education teacher, whose blond hair and blue eyes helped him “pass” as a non-Jew while he travelled across France, secretly visiting the chateaus and other makeshift refugee centres to keep his young wards healthy with exercise.
But as anti-Semitic legislation gave way to mass deportations and murder, his exercise routines turned into a morbid form of training, preparation for the day in which Loinger would, if everything went smoothly, smuggle the children across the border into neutral Switzerland.
As a grim backup, it was also preparation in case the children were discovered and sent to a concentration camp.
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