Addy Fuchs, a great witness of the Shoah, died on 27 December 2018

Addy Fuchs at the Shoah Memorial

Addy Fuchs was born in Paris in 1926 at the Rothschild hospital. The only son of two Polish Jews who fled the pogroms and misery of their country, he grew up in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, rue de la Mare. In the family, we speak Yiddish but we learn French. In 1937, they moved to the 10th arrondissement, where the mentality was more bourgeois; Addy joined Colbert High School and was a good student, particularly gifted in mathematics.

In 1939, his father was mobilized and they declared themselves as Jews to the authorities. Addy Fuchs will then wear the star and undergo prohibitions and humiliations. He escapes the roundup of Vél’ d'Hiv’ with his two cousins, his uncle and aunt, and passes through Vierzon into the free zone. First hidden and then reported to the Gestapo, they were arrested with false papers and locked up in the Kommandantur, then in the prison of Orléans, and finally in Pithiviers. Addy was deported to Drancy with her cousins, then finally again deported to Pithiviers with other young people. In their hut, they play checkers and chess.

On 21 September 1942, Addy Fuchs was deported to Auschwitz by convoy no. 35. At the sub-camp of Cosel, less than 100km from Auschwitz, he is part of the first selection with about 200 other young men. He works there as a prisoner on earthworks and rails. Addy remembers the words of the German camp leader: "Here you are not on the boulevard des Capucines, you are in a concentration camp, you go through the door and out through the chimney." In December, he was transferred to Blechhammer, a labor camp with about 4,000 Jews and prisoners of war. The discipline is very harsh there. Selections and searches are permanent. Registered in April 1944, Addy Fuchs works with cement, bricks and welding. He will be protected by a German foreman, the SS are increasingly severe, hit and kill, he will also be hit by a kapo.

On 21 January 1945, they left the camp and started a "death march". The 4,000 inmates traveled 250 kilometers to Gross-Rosen, and 2,000 were murdered. The survivors are taken away in wagons and will be discovered later under bombardment. Addy was transferred to the camp at Buchenwald, then from Langestein.

"I hope that today’s young people will be able to build a world with less hatred." Addy Fuchs

Addy Fuchs was released on 21 April 1945, he weighed 33 kg and was wounded in the shoulder. On 4 May 1945, he was reunited with his parents. He gains weight but falls ill. To recover, he does sports and becomes a communist activist. He meets Ida, a deportee’s daughter, with whom he will have three children. In 1951, he met up with his classmates from the camps, with whom he created the Amicale de Blechhammer. A memory activist, notably within the Auschwitz Union, Addy Fuchs testified for the Spielberg Foundation in 1995 as well as many times and for a long time at the Shoah Memorial for school audiences.  He also went to schools with his "teaching material": a yellow star, a prisoner’s jacket, an identity card stamped "Jew".

Addy Fuchs was also a great promoter of sports, especially volleyball, at the Gymnastic Sports Federation of Labor (FSGT), born into the socialist movement at the beginning of the century, and also attached to the Communist Party thereafter.

All our thoughts are with his loved ones.