*The DININ name was later changed to DINIM (see concluding note)
We know a certain amount from archival documents about Leib (Léon) DOUBCHAK, an artisan tailor, born in Odessa on 7 October 1895. His father David Doubchak was also a tailor and his mother’s maiden name was Sarah Rimmerman. Leib Doubchak came to France in 1905 at the age of 10 and was working as a tailor in Paris by 1915. On 16 September 1920, in Amiens, he married Marie DININ, also Jewish, born in Orleans, France, 14Sept 1897. She ran a shoe business in the Picard city (and other places) with her father Emil and her mother Sophie Podkaminer. Leib Doubchak and Marie Dinin had a son in 1922 but were divorced by court decision on 25 February 1925. In 1926, Leib married Rosa FREYER, a French-born Jew from Paris. The couple moved to Amiens in 1932 and took up residence at 30, rue Contrescarpe, a narrow street behind the present-day (2021) Caumont Theatres and close to the train station. Leib did a custom business as a tailor of women’s apparel, operating out of his home. He and Rosa were forced to register as Jews in Amiens in October 1940.
In early 1941, Leib Doubchak stopped his custom tailoring practice and sought work in the large department stores of Paris. In May of 1941, the French police on orders of the German authorities, created fiches for the foreign origin non-citizen Jews of the Somme, Leib Doubchak among them. Those whose history and reputation suggested criminality or perhaps communist political associations were candidates for internment. The police vouched for Leib Doubchak’s record and character as it did for the other foreign-citizen or stateless Jews in the group.
AJ38-5074_3141
AJ38-5074_3142
We thus have Leib’s fingerprints and a detailed, arcane catalogue of his physical traits but, based on those, there is no way of actually picturing him!
We know further that he was arrested in Paris on June 22, 1941 along with a number of other ex-Soviet citizens/Jews on the day the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and that he was interned in Compiègne. Thereafter a substantial correspondence including letters from Rosa Doubchak and various Vichy officials illustrate attempts to intervene on his behalf (AJ 38 5072/1777-1778 and surrounding). These efforts were in vain. Leib Doubchak was sent to Drancy and on 14 September 1942, more than a year after his arrest, he was deported to Auschwitz in Convoy 32. Rosa, forced to wear the yellow star and the subject of a photo fiche in June 1942, was herself arrested in the roundup (rafle) in Amiens and the Somme on January 4, 1944. She was fortunately saved at the Amiens train station by a railroad worker who pushed her out of sight of the other arrestees (see Rafle 1944 Témoignages). She reemerged in Amiens after the Liberation, continuing for a number of years the tailoring work formerly shared with her husband.
All this is what we already knew of Leib Doubchak and his family from the documents. Thanks, however, to some communications from Myriam DINIM, granddaughter of Leib Doubchak and of his first wife, Marie DININ, we now have some very pertinent additional documentation and information.
First, Myriam Dinim has made available several photographs:
Leib Doubchak and Marie Dinin (before April 1922)
-- One shows Leib Doubchak and Marie Dinin sometime before1922.
-- Another (probably earlier but hard to exactly date) is of a wedding party, notable for the presence not just of Leib (back row white shirt) but also, according to Ms. Dinim, of two of his sisters Rosa and Anna Doubchak (in the row below Leib Doubchak in white dresses). Myriam Dinim recalls meeting her two great aunts at the home of the daughter of Rosa in Le Bourget outside Paris in the 1960s.
We also learn from Ms. Dinim about a brother, Henri, older by ten years than Leib, who was also deported from Drancy to Auschwitz a month before Leib on Convoy 22, 21 August 1942. The spelling of the name is a bit different. Henri DOUBJACK, but Ms. Dinim has certainty of knowledge of their sibling relationship and common tragic fate. (C.D.J.C. 3 May 2021)
Many thanks to Myriam DINIM for agreeing to share these precious photographs and information about her famiy. 3 May 2021.
Other notes:
Myriam indicated that after moving to Israel her father changed the family name from DININ to DINIM, a word which means “laws” in Hebrew. She also indicated that Leib Doubchak was born in Tarnopol near Odessa, as was his older brother Henri (the C.D.J.C. lists the incorrect “Tomaspol” for Henri?). She assumes that the Doubchak family moved en masse to France in 1905.
David Doubchak, Leib’s father was deceased before 16 September 1920, when Leib married Marie Dinin in Amiens. Sarah Rimmerman was still alive at that point and was present at the wedding.
Wedding photo undated showing Leib Doubchak topmost row in white shirt; his sisters in white dresses one row below