A “militant of the duty of memory”. Elie Buzyn, one of the last witnesses to the Holocaust, died at the age of 93 on Monday May 23, his daughter, former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn, announced to AFP. “He died this morning. He was surrounded by his family”she said. “He felt unwell last night just after a testimonial conference, where he was with young people to ‘pass the baton’, a conference, which was very moving, very moving, which touched him a lot.”
A native of Poland, this survivor of the Auschwitz camp (Poland) was arrested in August 1944 in the Jewish ghetto of Lodz, where his family was parked. Elie Buzyn had settled in France in 1956. He was silent for a long time after the Second World War, like many other survivors. Later, he never ceased to endeavor to transmit the memory of the Shoah: by telling his story at conferences, or by accompanying several of his grandchildren as well as school groups to the Auschwitz camp. Birkenau.
“He passed on the baton with incredible consistency and determination until the end”, greeted AFP with the chief rabbi Haïm Korsia. On Twitter, Francis Kalifat, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions (Crif), paid tribute to a “an immense witness to the Holocaust and an indefatigable fighter for memory”. “Until the end, he carried the word of the victims of Nazi barbarism. His memory obliges us.”
On the government side, Clément Beaune, Minister Delegate for Europe, paid tribute to “this great witness, this light of transmission”inviting to be “at the height of his courage and his message”.