Memory

During World War II the people of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the surrounding villages of the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon mounted one of the greatest rescue operations of the war. Drawing on their Huguenot traditions of hospitality and stubborn resistance, and at risk to their own lives, they sheltered literally thousands of refugees.

Written right after the war, the account of Michel (Mietek) Pachter is exceptional for more than one reason. Mietek - who was only 16 at the outbreak of war - experienced the ghetto, the extermination camp and the forced labour camp. With his brother Vilek at his side, he was able to survive his terrible trials.

Originally from Czestochowa in Poland, Henri Zonus experienced the anti-Semitic persecutions and the terrible conditions in the ghetto. Unlike his family, he escaped deportation to Treblinka and death. At 14, Henri was forced to work in one of the most deadly Nazi armaments factories, Werk C of the Skarzysko forced labour camp. There, Jews were in contact with picrin powder, a toxic explosive which gave the nickname "yellow hell" to that part of the camp kept as a military secret.

Szyja Opatowski, nicknamed Samy, was 17 when the German troops invaded Poland in September 1939. For this young Jew, a long fight for survival began, a struggle at every moment to escape extermination. From April 1940, Samy was deported to Belzec, then a labour camp at the frontier of the Soviet Union. There, his analytical skills, his resourcefulness and extraordinary instinct enabled him to get out, without compromise.

This work presents the effort of a man to ensure that tribute be paid to the memory of those who gave a reprieve on life to the child he was and to his family, saving them from the death programmed for all Jews by the Nazis. Jean Henrion, with lucidity and intelligence, presents the fruit of seven years of research which led to distinguishing four "Righteous among the Nations": Pierre Fouchier, Jacques Ellul, Hélène Schweitzer (Rosenberg) and Edith Cerezuelle.

This work brings together several eyewitness accounts, including that of Maximilian Trenner, interpreter in charge of relations with the Germans, and that of Georges Krief, a young lawyer. It presents the stories of labour camps such as that of Bizerte, run directly by the SS, and those dependent on the Italian Army. The fate of the Jews of Sousse and Sfax is also described.

In November 2012, the Resistance and Deportation History Centre Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation (CHRD) in Lyon reopened after a year-long renovation. The new permanent exhibition features the latest advances in historiography.

Arrested with her parents March 31, 1944 in a village of the southwest department of Corrèze, Odette Spingam was taken to the barracks of Périgueux, then the transit camp of Drancy, before being deported to the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where her mother perished.

The Camp des Milles, an important place of remembrance of the internment and deportation of France’s Jews, houses a museum created with support from the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah. The Camp des Milles Memorial Site was one of the key projects of Marseille Provence 2013: European Capital of Culture.

Thanks to the clandestine network which he set up inside the Organisation to Save the Children - OSE (Oeuvre de secours aux enfants), Georges Garel saved many Jewish children pursued by the Nazis and their collaborators. This republication of his war memoirs presents to the reader a reference document, a detailed examination of this exceptional action.