Henri Minczeles, a Holocaust survivor, died on 10 March 2017

Henri and his brother Roser in Paris in 1941. © Shoah Memorial

Henri Minczeles was born in 1926 in Paris to a Polish-Jewish immigrant family. In 1941, Henri Minczeles’s father was interned at the Pithiviers camp and then deported by convoy no. 6 of July 17, 1942. He was gassed at Auschwitz. Henri continued his studies in Paris with his mother and brother, they escaped the roundup of 16 July 1942. Thanks to fake papers and the help of two women, Marie Ménérat, concierge, and Suzanne Leulier, leather worker, Henri remains clandestinely in Paris and participated in the Liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944.  He then became a journalist and went through the Training Center for Journalists between 1946 and 1948 before marrying in 1949 with Léa Radacz, with whom he had two children, Chantal and Alain.

Henri Minczeles was a fierce militant of memory. In the book dedicated to "Convoy 6" for the memory of his father Charles Szepsel Minczeles he wrote:

Hitler is responsible for my return to Judaism. That is why I have been a memory activist, a watchdog of remembrance for more than half a century. I have expressed it in many studies and articles on the radio. I have written books on Judaism, its history and various ideologies and doctrines of Jewishness.  I have been attending the commemoration of the Warsaw ghetto uprising since 1946. I urged my children and grandchildren to come to this manifestation of remembrance. The rest is silence.”

From his earliest youth, Henri Minczeles actively participated in the Bundist movement of which he became a key figure. He later chaired the Cercle amical Arbeter Ring. In 2000, Henri joined the Association for the memory of deported Jewish children from the 18th arrondissement. He was a delegate to the CRIF from 1979 to 2001, then to the CRIF’s remembrance commission. Henri Minczeles was also an activist of the Association des Fils et Filles des Déportés Juifs de France of Serge Klarsfleld.

Henri Minczeles left us on March 10, 2017, his funeral will take place on Wednesday, March 15 at 2:30 pm in the Parisian cemetery of Bagneux. All our thoughts are with his loved ones.

Book: A history of the Jews in Poland, by Henri Minczeles

Henri Minczeles in Paris after the war

Last letter from Charles Minczeles sent to his wife and children on July 16, 1942
"Don’t worry, my darling. We won’t kill so many people."