The Grenoble B’nai B’rith Lodge received its Charter in June 1985, with Alain Carignon, Mayor of Grenoble, in attendance. It was named Mordehai after Mordehai Anilewicz, defender and hero of the Warsaw ghetto during the uprising against the Nazi occupation.
Robert Elkaïm, Founding President, was invested by Joseph Domberger of B’nai B’rith Europe and Sam Hoffenberg, President of B’nai B’rith France.
In 1987, the B.B.Y.O. was founded in the presence of Michel Hannoun, Mayor of Voreppe.
In 1992, the Lodge organised a conference with the Count of Paris and sent a humanitarian convoy to the former Yugoslavia in partnership with the Red Cross. Food aid and medicines were collected for the Refugees of Jablanika. The onvoy was part of the "100 km for Peace" from Lyons to Yugoslavia.
In 1993, the Lodge organised an exhibition on the Warsaw Ghetto Une journée en Enfer (One day in Hell). Heinrich Jost, a German Army soldier spent a day taking photos in the Warsaw Ghetto. Just a few weeks later, no more pictures could be taken. These 129 shots provide a record of the Warsaw Jews' suffering.
The Lodge also organised a commemorative event in memory of the children of La Martellière, involving many public figures and a gathering of several thousands. After 53 years of silence, the town of Voiron, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel and the Grenoble B’nai B’rith Lodge finally commemorated this raid in which 16 Jewish children and two of their guardians were seized and deported. 15 of them died in the Nazi concentration camps.
On 23rd March 1944 at La Martellière in Voiron, following a tip-off, 16 children and two guardians from the Rabbi Zalman Chneerson children's home were arrested by the Gestapo for being Jews.
They were transferred to Drancy, and although one escaped, 15 were deported to the Nazi extermination camps in convoys on 13th April and 15th May 1944. Only one came out alive.
The Memorial was inaugurated at La Martellière Agricultural School on 14th September 1997.
The ceremony, attended by several thousand people, was marked by deep solemnity. There was great public interest in the event and was broadcast and publicised around the world.
In 1998, the René Fajnberg Benevolence Fund was founded to support families in Grenoble, and in 1999, organised a demonstration in support of 13 Iranian Jews under a death threat.
The Lodge launched the documentary In Search of Peace in collaboration with the Simon Centre. The documentary draws together reports and film clips illustrating all the significant events in the history of Israel between 1948 and 1967. The film ends at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 1967.
The Lodge celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2006, in collaboration with the city of Grenoble and the Judaicart gallery, with Raya Sorkine in attendance. 250 people attended the exhibition opening.
