Maurice Loebenberg, known by thenom de guerre ofMaurice Cachoud (Zurich, June 29, 1916 - July 20, 1944 Paris; arrested 18 July 1944 and tortured to death) was aJewish member of theFrench Resistance duringWorld War II. He founded a group that specialized in forging official papers for use by resistance fighters and escaping Jews.
Loebenberg was an engraver. He joined the resistance in 1940 and was responsible for circulating the clandestine newspaperCombat in theMarseille region in 1941. Starting in May 1943, and especially after theGermans occupied the region aroundNice, previously occupied by theItalians.
Assisted by Raymond Heymann, Loebenberg put to use his skills as an engraver and began creating false papers on a large scale. He made contact with theArmée juive (Jewish Army) and formed the Maurice Cachoud group (after hisnom de guerre). The group procured thousands of stamps from official French or German papers to help it create convincing forgeries. It created identity cards, birth certificates, marriage certificates, and ration cards, which it distributed to Jews in hiding and to members of the resistance andMaquisards.
Author Pierre Piazza describes Loebenberg's work as a forger: “In 1944, the sophistication of this forgery service was such that it made packets of false papers intended to feed factories, groups of deserters, and Jews in hiding. As complete as they were varied, and easy to use (explanatory notes were attached), these packets from the perfect forger were almost small field laboratories.”
Loebenberg's group produced an estimated 20,000 or more identity cards from September 1943 to March 1944. It also organized the flight of young people toFrench colonies, where they could enlist in theFree French Forces. Finally, it hunted down and executed French people who denounced their countrymen to the Germans.
In May 1944, Loebenberg was called toParis, where he was to centralize the forgery service of theNational Liberation Movement. Raymond Heymann took over his position in Nice. While he was in Paris, Jewish resistance leaders made contact with a man who claimed to be a representative ofMI6. In fact, this was Karl Rehbein, a German agent responsible for the massacre of young members of the resistance who were shot in theBois de Boulogne. Rehbein had Loebenberg arrested on July 17, 1944, with other members of the Organisation Juive de Combat (a name used at this time by the Armée juive). Loebenberg was turned over to theFrench Gestapo, and tortured to death at 180Rue de la Pompe in Paris. His body was found in a bush in the Verrières woods outside of Paris. He was buried in theMontparnasse Cemetery on April 10, 1945, with military honors.
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