Jean and Hélène in Aubergenville
Hélène Berr was 21 years old in 1942. A Parisian student at the Sorbonne, she kept her diary from April 1942 to February 1944. This text, of an exceptional literary quality, mixes the daily experience of the unbearable and the dreamed world of letters, alternating at every moment between hope and despair.
Arrested on 8 March 1944, she was deported to Auschwitz with her father and mother. She survived almost to the end of the ordeal, succumbing to exhaustion at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, five days before the camp was liberated.
The exhibition, going beyond the strict framework of Hélène Berr’s diary and personality, extends to the context of the Occupation and its persecution of Jews in France. It offers the opportunity to discover the original manuscript of this journal published in 2008, as well as many family archives deposited at the Shoah Memorial.
Florida Atlantic University
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