André Berkover, deported to Auschwitz at the age of 14, was one of the most active witnesses of the memory of the Shoah among the younger generations. He died in Saint-Maur on Saturday, August 18, 2018 at the age of 89. The Shoah Memorial honors him.
Portrait of André Berkover. France, 1940s
Deportation comrades, professors, members of the National Federation of Deportees and Internees, Resistors and Patriots, of the Foundation for the Memory of the Deportation, the mayor of Montreuil and his deputies and many people gathered at the old cemetery of Montreuil on August 24th to pay their last respects to André Berkover, a survivor of the Shoah.
André Berkover was born on July 29, 1929 in Paris to a Romanian-Polish family, he grew up in the 20th arrondissement of the capital. On June 28, 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo while hiding at your aunt’s place. Deported to Drancy, he finds his brother Guy there before being deported by convoy No. 76 on June 30, 1944, with his mother. In Auschwitz, he follows the group of men over 16 years old even though he is only 14. He will be selected for work and assigned to Auschwitz III Buna-Monowitz. Later, he managed to escape during the "death marches" and was helped by Polish farmers and treated by Soviet people before being repatriated to Paris. At the Lutetia hotel, André finds his father and older sister, but his mother and brother will not return from the camps. André will become an industrial draftsman and settle in Montreuil in 1964 with his wife Liliane and their two children.
In 1995, during the 50 years from the liberation of the campsand while the collective memory of the Shoahwakes up, André Berkover decides to speak for the first time. Since then, he has not stopped testifying with middle and high school students, especially between 2005 and 2017, a period during which he was one of the most active witnesses at the Shoah Memorial, in schools or for the Auschwitz Memory Fund Association. André Berkover also regularly intervened in theschools of Montreuil and accompanied the high school students of the city duringstudy trips to Auschwitz. In 2007, André Berkover published histestimony André Berkover, registration number A165572, Société des gens de lettres de France, 2007.
A day of tribute to André Berkover will take place at the town hall of Montreuil this autumn.
All our thoughts go to his loved ones.
We invite you to (re)discover the testimony "My liberation" by André Bervover in video:
