As soon as they returned from Auschwitz, the survivors gathered together. To return to life, help each other, then to organize their claims and maintain the memory of the disappeared. In particular, by creating the Auschwitz Amicale in June 1945, which became the Union of Auschwitz deportees, they created a space and a milestone in the memory of the deportation.
How did they go through these eighty years that separate us today from the immediate post-war period? What words, positions, and struggles did they carry together?
It is their common history that we trace in this series, a history both political and emotional, a history of solidarity and commemoration – a memory in action. Constructed chronologically, the series is supported by historians Annette Wieviorka and Olivier Lalieu. It takes us to the great places of this memory, and we draw its contours: because the history of these associations crosses that of the witnesses, but also the political history of France since the Liberation.
Four episodes to immerse you in an original historical narrative, punctuated by many unpublished archives, testimonies never heard, encounters, readings, music, memories. Four episodes to understand the construction of memory, and work towards its perpetuation.
A podcast proposed by the Auschwitz Deportees' Union, in partnership with Le Mémorial de la Shoah. Written and narrated by Léa Veinstein, directed and set to music by Alexandre Babeanu.
Historical advisers: Olivier Lalieu, Annette Wieviorka.
Archives INA.
Readings: Héloïse Godet and Zohar Wexler.
Original Yiddish music: Talila and Alain Speiser.
Graphic design: Julien de Gasquet
UDA website:
Proposed by the UDA and hosted by the Shoah Memorial
With the support of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah and the Rothschild Foundation
