Elie Buzyn, one of the last great French witnesses to Auschwitz, has died
Elie Buzyn, deported to Auschwitz during the Second World War, in 2015 in Paris.
© Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
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Elie Buzyn, father of former French Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn, died Monday May 23 at the age of 93.
During his life, he worked to transmit the memory of the Shoah, of which he was a witness, arrested at the age of 15 in Poland, before being deported with his family, who never returned, then to rebuild in France.
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Elie Buzyn had his deportee tattoo surgically removed, and justified his gesture by explaining: “
You cannot live, if you live with that every day.
»
Of Polish origin, this survivor of the Auschwitz camp had been arrested at the age of 15, in the Jewish ghetto of Łódź, where his family was then parked, like so many others.
►Archive: The vibrant story of Feiga, born in a death camp (2014)
His parents will succumb in the gas chambers.
But the teenager will survive the death marches, these convoys of prisoners leaving the concentration camps.
In 1956, he moved to France and became an orthopedic surgeon.
He marries Etty, a renowned psychoanalyst, specialist in early childhood.
For a long time, like many camp survivors, Elie Buzyn was silent and did not want to return to Auschwitz.
But one day, he understands that he must testify.
DISAPPEARANCE.
Elie Buzyn, one of the last French witnesses to Auschwitz, died Monday at the age of 93.
The father of the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn had told his life to the INA and the Foundation for the memory of the Shoah.
An exceptional testimony.
https://t.co/viqBKRnJBD pic.twitter.com/1SE4YVCjhy
— Ina.fr (@Inafr_officiel) May 23, 2022
Subsequently, he worked tirelessly to transmit the memory of the Shoah.
From then on, he considered it “a duty” to testify in schools and at Auschwitz, with the groups led each year by the chief rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia.
Incredibly, he testified again last night in the presence of young people from an association bearing the name "La Relèv", a symbol if there is one of the passing of the baton to the generation of tomorrow.
It is up to them, and all of us, to take over and perpetuate his memory. #ElieBuzyn
— Haim Korsia (@HaimKorsia) May 23, 2022
Elie Buzyn was convinced that all those he had helped to approach the horror of the camps would in turn become witnesses to witnesses.
“Survivor of the Holocaust, he testified tirelessly and until his last days of the unspeakable.
His memory will live, ”wrote on Twitter the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron.
Elie Buzyn has left us.
A survivor of the Holocaust, he testified tirelessly and until his last days to the unspeakable.
His memory will live.
My condolences to his family and loved ones.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) May 23, 2022
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