People mourning for the tragedy of Guerry’s wells

Held by

Montreal Holocaust Museum via Canadian Jewish Heritage Network (incl. Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives)

Dates

1944 (indexed as 1944)

Level

item

Extent

Photograph : paper : b&w ; Ht: 12,2 cm x W: 17,2 cm

Scope & content

White border with deckled edges. Outdoor scene of nine people wearing dress clothes. The only woman is in the middle and she is crying. This photographs surrounds the tragedy of Guerry’s wells. Narrative: The tragedy of Guerry’s wells is a jewish persecution that took place the night of the 21st and 22nd of July 1944 at Saint-Amand-Montrond (France) on a farm. 36 persons where thrown in three different wells along with some stones in order to crush them alive. Since the beginning of the war many Jewish hid there. Charles Krameisen was the only survivor. He went to the police to tell the tragedy. Robert Monheit (the donor) helped to hid Jews from Alsace-Lorraine (his hometown) to Saint-Amand-Montrond and nearby villages such as La Chartre. He gave lessons to the son of Charles Krameisen to prepare for his bar mitzvah. Regarding the wells, as he was in charge of reorganizing the post-war Jewish life in Alsace-Lorraine and had already links with Saint-Amand, he was part of the witnesses invited to attend the exhumation of the bodies of victims. His religious functions confirmed that the survivors had lost their spouses and therefore gave them permission to remarry.

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Genre / form

graphic material

In the picture

CoatCrowdGroup PortraitHatJewish CommunityManOutdoor EventSuitTreeWomanTagged automatically by a vision model; may contain mistakes.

Text in the image

cjhn.caRead automatically; may contain mistakes.

Harvested

2026-10-19T03:21:16Z · source datestamp n/a · andornot

Digital objects at the source

• imageOpen original at source ↗2012_31_43.jpg