Charles Baron at the Shoah Memorial on May 4, 2016, during the ceremony of Yom Hashoah
Charles Baron, a survivor of the Shoah, died on Tuesday, October 4 at the age of 90. The Memorial pays tribute to him.
A former deportee, survivor of the Birkenau camp, Charles Baron died on Tuesday at the age of 90. All his life, he was able to testify about the inhumanity of the concentration camp universe.
Born in Paris on July 18, 1926, only child of a father of Polish origin and a French mother, born in Paris in 1902. After the occupation of France, he often resided with his grandparents, agricultural workers, in the small village of Cernay-la-ville (Yvelines). His parents were rounded up during the great 'Vél. d'Hiv roundup' on July 16, 1942 and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau by convoy No. 10. His mother will be gassed upon her arrival and his father selected for pseudo-medical "experiments" by SS Dr. Johann-Paul Kremer. Apprentice leather goods maker in Paris, Charles is arrested by the police of the Versailles police station during a check at the St Rémy-les-Chevreuse train station (Seine-et-Oise). He was interned for five days at the Drancy camp before being deported by convoy No. 34 on September 18, 1942.
In Kosel, in Silesia, he will be chosen for various "forced labor camps for Jews in Silesia" (annexes of Auschwitz and Gross Rosen) then sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp-Birkenau where he will attend a despicable staging for the killing of hundreds of Lithuanian Jewish children on the night of the Jewish New Year (October 1944). He is finally transferred to Dachau (Bavaria) for the construction of a secret weapons factory but escapes with a friend from an evacuation train.
At the end of April 1945, extremely weakened (Charles then weighs 29 kg for 1.60 m), he is repatriated to Paris, three years to the day after his deportation. He marries in 1950 with Micheline, a deportee’s daughter who has not returned and who gives him back his taste for life. They will have two daughters together.
«When one of us was going to die, he asked us to tell the others»
Between 1950 and 1960, it then becomes essential to testify and Charles Baron thus surrounds himself with friends survivors of the Shoah, Ida Grynspan, Yvette Lévy and Henri Wolff and will confide: «I didn’t have a crazy confidence in myself but, my principle was that if you want something, you shouldn’t wait for it to come, you should go get it». He then engages in the fight of a lifetime: telling the horror and inhumanity of the camps through his experience and lived. His testimony finds its place among the young generations who listen, understand and learn from history.
Charles Baron was a member of the editorial committee of the "review of the history of the Shoah" published by the Shoah Memorial. His testimony was filmed by the "Spielberg Foundation", MK2 (2h27) and the INA in 2004.
We invite you to rediscover his testimony:
The funeral of Charles Baron will take place on Monday, October 10 at 3 PM at the cemetery of Bagneux (45 Avenue Marx Dormoy, 92220 Bagneux).
