Rabbi Shlomo Aviner – who is a major figure on the Israeli religious right as well as allegedly a serial sex criminal – (1) also has an odd – for lack of a better term – origins story in that he claims according to Ariella Bracha Waldinger that he was:
‘Born in German-occupied Lyon, France in 1943, he was spared deportation by being hidden under a false identity.’ (2)
While the company ‘Pomeranz Books’ – who stock Aviner’s books – claims that:
‘Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Hacohen Aviner is a prominent Israeli rabbi and author known for his work in Jewish thought and religious Zionism. Born in 1943 in Lyon, France, he moved to Israel after converting to Judaism from secularism.’ (3)
Now I cannot find any substantial detail as to what these claims entail, but I will point out a historical incongruity to this claim since Aviner’s birth date is 12th March 1943 and his birth name is actually Claude Langenauer. (4)
The interesting thing about this is that Aviner’s birth occurs about a month after the Rue Sainte-Catherine Roundup by the SS on 9th February 1943 where the SS under Klaus Barbie raided the ‘Union generale des israelites de France’ (hereafter UGIF) office in Lyon because this UGIF office was suspected – rightly as it happens – of running an ‘escape line’ for jews out of Lyon into Switzerland (although sometimes Spain) and was thus part of the French resistance.
The SS arrested 86 people – 2 of whom subsequently escaped from Wehrmacht custody at Montluc prison and 1 was released from Gestapo custody – for their involvement in the UGIF escape line and the remaining 83 jews were sent to concentration camps in the East.
The point here is that this is ostensibly an obvious reason why Aviner’s parents would have ‘hidden’ their newly born son a month later, but as Barbie and the SS weren’t actively rounding up jews in many meaningful way in 1943 – remember the Rue Sainte-Catherine Roundup was primarily focused on resistance activity less because it was jews although Barbie did time the raid to scoop up as many jews as possible for deportation to the work camps in the East – and only really began to do so in bulk in mid-late 1944 and Lyon was ‘liberated’ by the Allies on 3rd September 1944 as a consequence of the lesser-known companion operation to ‘Operation Overlord’: ‘Operation Dragoon’ (which began on 15th August 1944 and where the Western Allied conducted a large military landing in the area of Provence).
Then one wonders on what basis Aviner’s parents were allegedly hiding him – after all the SS weren’t specifically hunting jews for jews to send to the camps till 1944 not in 1943 when Aviner was born – since – for example – Barbie only raided the jewish children’s home at Izieu – between the cities of Lyon and Chambery – on 6th April 1944 and sent the 42 children and 7 adults there to Auschwitz although inexplicably 2 of the children and one of the adults apparently ended up in Tallinn – the capital of Estonia – and were allegedly ‘murdered by the Nazis’ there – I will be looking into this separately - and an additional adult jew survived. (5)
Further it appears both of Aviner’s parents also survived the war unharmed – odd if they were giving away their son Claude as a baby between March 1943 and September 1944 because it suggests they believed they were going to be immediately arrested as well – given they sired a brother to Claude (Shlomo) in 1954 named Elisha Aviner. (6)
Thus, we can see that Aviner’s story of how he survived the ‘Holocaust’ doesn’t make a great deal of sense and rather suggests he is either being dishonest about it and/or hiding something. What exactly I can’t tell you but something in the story he tells isn’t right; there is a missing element here and one that - due to the sparse information - I cannot figure out.
Time will tell however as it always does, but we do know something in that Rabbi Shlomo Aviner’s ‘Holocaust Survivor’ story reeks of fakery.
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/rabbi-shlomo-aviner-jewish-rapist
(2) https://comingintothelightofaliyah.com/2014/05/15/1105/
(3) https://www.pomeranzbooks.co.il/author_details?data=26319
(4) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Shlomo_Aviner
(5) On this see: https://web.archive.org/web/20210517084759/http://izieu.com/
(6) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Elisha_Aviner