“I knew these children. They were deported and disappeared. I am here and I talk about them.” For 80 years, Samuel Pintel has never stopped thinking about his comrades. Not a day goes by without him wondering why he was lucky enough to survive. On April 6, 1944, he was not present in Izieu, in Ain, when a detachment of the Wehrmacht and a group of the gestapo from Lyon burst into a house in the village transformed into a refuge for young persecuted Jews. That day, 44 children were arrested, as well as seven adults who were supervising them. All died in deportation, with the exception of a young woman.

 “I owe him the air I breathe”

As he recounts in his autobiography "L'enfant d'Izieu" (Harper Collins Editions), Samuel Pintel, born in 1937 in Paris into a family of Polish Jews, had his life saved because he left the colony a few weeks before the drama. For several decades, this man did not know where he had been placed from November 1943 to January 1944. He only discovered it in 1987 in front of his television during the trial of Klaus Barbie, the head of the Lyon gestapo (the police German politician) and organizer of the roundup. "I followed the court reports and I recognized the places. I realized, almost 45 years later, that the place where I was at the time was Izieu's house ", he explains.

The parents of Samuel Pintel, Jacob and Tauba in 1936. © Private collection

Samuel Pintel then went there. His intuition is correct. Even though he was only six years old at the time, he had no doubts. He did spend a few months in this house during the war. “I don’t have good memories of it,” he admits after all these years. "It was stressful. What tormented me the most was not knowing where my mother was. What had become of her? I was lost. I told myself that she wasn't was never going to be able to find me,” recalls the former hidden child.

On November 16, 1943, Samuel Pintel had in fact already escaped the worst. Taking refuge in a support center for Jews with his mother Tauba in Chambéry, while his father Jacob is a prisoner in Germany, he sees with horror the enemy soldiers arriving. Desperate, his mother decides to separate from him. “Don’t come with me, I’m not your mother anymore, go with this woman,” she orders him in a low voice. The young boy obeys and follows the only non-Jewish woman housed in this center: “As chance would have it, she was by my side during the identity check and she agreed to take my hand. Thanks to her, I was not deported with my mother. I owe her the air I breathe."

The young Samuel Pintel. © Private collection

Izieu’s house, a haven of peace

This providential woman, whose name he still does not know today, then entrusted him to the General Union of Israelites of France (Ugif). A few days later, Miron Zlatin, the director of the Izieu house, came to pick him up by bike. For several weeks, Samuel Pintel, now without news of his mother, lives to the rhythm of the colony. Too young to understand, he thought he was the only Jew in this place. The little Parisian does not know that dozens of other children, persecuted like him because of their religion, have found refuge in this large house run by Miron and his wife Sabine Zlatin. They then benefit from the protection of the local sub-prefect Pierre-Marcel Wiltzer. Until January 1944, 105 children stayed in Izieu.

Miron Zlatin, the director of the Izieu children's home. © Sabine Zlatin Estate

Samuel Pintel left home at this time when his former neighbors in Paris, Jeanne and Alexis Bosselut, came to pick him up and bring him back to the capital. At the same time, the threat is getting closer. After the transfer of the sub-prefect, the Zlatin couple found themselves deprived of their main support. Made aware of the presence of these Jewish children following a denunciation, Klaus Barbie orders them to be arrested. This disastrous April 6, 1944, Sabine Zlatin was not present. On a mission to Montpellier to find new points of refuge for these residents, she is one of the rare survivors of the roundup, unlike her husband Miron.

A photo of the Izieu house taken in the summer of 1943. © Serge Pludermacher

A key witness in the Barbie trial, Samuel Pintel found Sabine Zlatin at the end of the 1980s. "She showed me a letter in which my name appeared, as well as the attendance lists. I then realized that the 44 children were all present when I was there and I was the last to have left the colony,” he explains. “That was the trigger. I told myself I couldn’t let them down.”

Passing on the memory of the children of Izieu

Until the Liberation, he was hidden by his neighbors, the Bosselut, whom he had recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. He also had the pleasure of seeing his father return from captivity and his mother from the Bergen-Belsen camp where she had been deported. But this joy quickly gave way to mourning. Weakened by mistreatment, Tauba died in 1951, a few weeks after giving birth to a little girl.

Members of the Bosselut family who hid Samuel Pintel during the war. Alexis, the father is standing in the center, his wife Jeanne and his daughter Janine are seated on the right. © Private collection

Despite a torn childhood, Samuel Pintel was able to build a life for himself. He had a brilliant career as an engineer, particularly in the aerospace field. In addition to his professional activity, he threw himself headlong, alongside Sabine Zlatin, into memory work to make the story of the Izieu children known. These efforts were rewarded by the inauguration, in 1994, of the Izieu memorial museum by President François Mitterrand. “This house has become an emblem. It has a universal character,” underlines Samuel Pintel.

For years, the former hidden child has tirelessly met schoolchildren to tell the fate of his little friends: "I tell them that these kids had done nothing. They were arrested, deported and exterminated simply because they were Jewish . I am not asking today's young people to help me carry my burden of memory, but I am encouraging them to meditate on this and become full-fledged citizens."

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