St. Louis’ remarkable stories from the Holocaust: Jacques Braitberg

Published July 6, 2021

Since 1979, Vida “Sister” Goldman Prince has been Chairman of the Oral Histories Project, at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum. The project is dedicated to recording and preserving audio interviews of not only Holocaust Survivors, but also liberators of Nazi concentration camps and other non-Jewish witnesses living in Europe during World War II.

The museum was one of the first to begin gathering oral history projects so these voices and photographs will be displayed and future generations will continue to be witnesses to this catastrophic period of world history. In partnership with the Jewish Light, The St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum is allowing us to republish a portion of these Oral Histories project as a celebration of life and a crucial part of honoring and remembering the past. Please follow the provided links to additional recordings.

Jacques Braitberg was born in Piotrkow-Trybunalski, Poland in 1916. He and his twin brother, Gregor, were the youngest of eight children. Before the war, Braitberg completed a Bachelor’s Degree. He then went to France at the end of 1938 to attend the Sorbonne University. He also attended a renowned music school, École Normale de Musique, to study the violin. Mr. Braitberg joined the French Foreign Legion in 1939, and later during World War II, he served in the French underground as a courier. While living in France, he hid his true identity.

After the war ended, with the help of the Red Cross, Braitberg was able to make contact with surviving family members, which included three brothers and a sister. He managed to bring all but one (Gregor, who went with his family to Russia) to his home in France. Many of them eventually came to the United States with their families. Jacques Braitberg, his wife, and their children came to St. Louis, MO from France in 1971 to be near family.