Alice Anna Weiller (née Javal; 10 October 1869 – 7 September 1943) was a French art collector murdered at Auschwitz due to her Jewish heritage. The wife of

Lazare Weiller Lazare Weiller (20 July 1858 – 12 August 1928) was a French engineer, industrialist, and politician. He was born in Alsace and received a technical education in England and in his cousin's copper factory in Angoulême. He was very interested in ...

, she was awarded the

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

. During the Second World War, she was interned at

Drancy Drancy () is a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris in the Seine-Saint-Denis department in northern France. It is located 10.8 km (6.7 mi) from the center of Paris. History Toponymy The name Drancy comes from Medieval Lati ...

and deported to

Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...

, where she was murdered. She was the mother of the aviator and industrialist

Paul-Louis Weiller Paul-Louis Weiller (September 29, 1893, Paris - December 6, 1993, Geneva) was a French industrialist and philanthropist. Biography From a Jewish Alsatian family, Weiller was the son of the industrialist and politician Lazare Weiller (1858–192 ...

Life

The

Javal family The Javal family originated in Alsace. They benefited from Napoleon I's policy of Napoleon and the Jews, openness toward Jews, and in the 19th century experienced a remarkable ascent, with family members becoming prominent bankers, industrialists ...

, who had made their fortune in

Alsace Alsace (, ; ) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in the Grand Est administrative region of northeastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine, next to Germany and Switzerland. In January 2021, it had a population of 1,9 ...

, were Jewish mill owners, merchants, and bankers who settled in Paris, where Alice was born. She was the daughter of

Louis Émile Javal Louis Émile Javal (5 May 1839 – 20 January 1907) was a French ophthalmologist born in Paris. Javal is remembered for his studies of physiological optics and his work involving a disorder known as strabismus. Early life He was born in Par ...

(1839-1907), a well-known ophthalmologist and collector of Japanese art, and his wife Maria Anna Ellissen (1847-1933), and was one of five children, all given a liberal education. Her sister Jeanne married Paul Weiss and was the mother of

Louise Weiss Louise Weiss (25 January 1893 – 26 May 1983) was a French author, journalist, feminist, and European Union, European politician. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 Nobel Peace Prize, 1971 and for the Nobel Prize in Literatur ...

, a journalist and campaigner for women's rights and

Jenny Aubry Marie Jenny Emilie Aubry (née Weiss; 8 October 1903 – 21 January 1987) was a French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Life and career Born in to the Parisian middle-class elite, to Paul Louis Weiss (1867–1945) and Jeanne Félicie Weiss (née ...

, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.Des femmes sous les feux de la rampe
at lalsace.fr, accessed 9 October 2019 On 12 August 1889, Alice married

(1858–1928), industrialist and regional senator, as his second wife, his first having died. They met through a family called Ellissen, her relations, investors in one of his companies. The witnesses at the wedding were

Eugène Spuller Eugène Spuller (8 December 183523 July 1896) was a French politician and writer. He was born at Seurre (Côte-d'Or), his father being a German who had married and settled in France. After studying law at Dijon, he went to Paris, where he was c ...

, the poet

Sully Prudhomme René François Armand "Sully" Prudhomme (; 16 March 1839 – 6 September 1907) was a French poet and essayist. He was the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901. Born in Paris, Prudhomme originally studied to be an engineer, bu ...

, and Adolphe Carnot, brother of the President of France. Wright-Fort Myer

The Weillers had four children, Jean-Pierre (1890), Marie-Thérèse (1890), Georges-André (1892) and Paul-Louis (1893–1993). In 1908, Alice Weiller began to take a keen interest in aviation, after her husband had offered a prize of $10,000 for the first powered flight in France. She met the

Wright brothers The Wright brothers, Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were American aviation List of aviation pioneers, pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flyin ...

, who took the prize, and on 9 October 1908 made an early flight in their biplane, two days after Édith Berg. She did not herself become a pilot, as sometimes suggested, but her son Paul-Louis eventually did. In 1932, Alice Weiller became vice-chairman of a committee of the Alsace-Lorraine Society promoting holiday camps for the working classes and subsequently was appointed as a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. During the Second World War, she was one of the French Jews interned at the

Drancy internment camp Drancy internment camp () was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps during the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, German occupation of France duri ...

near Paris. On 2 September 1943 she was deported to German

concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...

s in Poland and was murdered at

on 7 September.Inscription on the Wall of Names: "Alice WEILLER née le 10/10/1869 à PARIS, déportée à Auschwitz par le convoi n° 59 au départ de Drancy le 02/09/1943."

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weiller, Alice 1869 births 1943 deaths Recipients of the Legion of Honour French people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp