TESTIMONIAL EUROPE 1
France commemorates Sunday the roundup of the Vél 'd'Hiv'. Throughout France, events have been organized to pay tribute to the 13,000 Jewish victims who were arrested and deported 77 years ago. In a moving speech, the Minister of Armies Florence Parly reaffirmed the responsibility of France. For the occasion, Europe 1 collected the testimony of Esther Sénot, now 91 years old.
"I could not go home anymore, my parents had been arrested"
On July 16, 1942, she barely had 15 and lived in a small apartment with her parents and seven siblings in Paris. The French police then burst into his building. "We heard noises, we did not understand what was going on, in the building, they brought down families, we heard cries, weeping little children, my mother was completely panicked," she said. remembers Esther Sénot.
But no one knocks on their door. Panicked, his mother asks him to visit his sister-in-law. Esther discovers her then frightened, hidden in a maid's room. She then returns home but this time, the police was well past.
"I found myself in front of my door, with the seals on, I could not go home, my parents were arrested, with my little brother, Achille, who was 11. I did not know where to go, I was completely demoralized, "she says. "The concierge told me: 'you stay here.' She kept me in her dressing room for about two weeks, she was French," she continues.
"I am one of those who will testify to the end"
Esther Sénot escaped the raid Vel d'hiv but her story does not stop there. A few months later, after an identity check, she was arrested and then deported to a concentration camp in Birkenau, Germany, where she found her sister, close to death. Esther Sénot swears to her that if she survives, she will tell, will bear witness to this horror. Today surviving, that's what she continues to do:
"She told me that if I had a chance to survive, I had to testify, so that the world would know the horrors, I'm one of those who will testify to the end."