when Robert Badinter remembered his first visit to the Nazi camp

“No one went there, it was deserted”, remembers Robert Badinter. In 1956, only the ghosts of the exterminated Jews still haunted the Auschwitz camp. This extermination camp where more than 1.1 million people died under the regime of Adolf Hitler.

Robert Badinter lost his uncle there. Her paternal grandmother died in the deportation wagon that was taking her to the death camp. Eleven years after the liberation of the camp by the Soviets, he decided to go to where part of his family had been decimated. An indelible memory still today at 91 years old.

First visit to the Auschwitz camp at age 28

It is a conservative, professor of Polish history, who welcomes one spring day someone who has not yet been Minister of Justice. He is 28 years old and visiting the death camp for the first time. “Curiously, there were between the steps which went down to the gas chamber, three small flowerssaid Robert Badinter. I looked at this, picked one of the flowers and sent it to my mother and added: ‘For me, this is a symbol that life always triumphs over death.'” .

You must not forget the dead and not live their deaths of which you become captive. Life is stronger than death.

Robert Badinter, former Minister of Justice

at franceinfo

The “pain of the absent”

However, life cannot anesthetize pain. “It takes a very, very long time for the healing processexplained Robert Badinter. There are always times when it comes back, like some limbs that are amputated. Strangely, some days you have pain where there is nothing left. That’s exactly it: you refuse disappearance.” The former Minister of Justice continues: “Often, this time returns with the crazy hope that they have returned. You wake up at that moment, but they have not returned. This is why the specific pain of the absent is rooted, it makes part of your being.”

And Robert Badinter devoted his entire being with passion to fighting injustice. “The fight against fanaticism, prejudice and filthy ignorancelists the former Minister of Justice. We must fight and confront, not flee. Each of us must learn the lesson of Auschwitz.”

Contempt for human life is a fight that everyone must wage constantly and firmly.

Robert Badinter, former Minister of Justice

at franceinfo

Fighting fanaticism and racism because we can show the crime, he added, is not enough. The former Minister of Justice died at the age of 95 on February 9, 2024.