Holocaust survivor, the only surviving member of his family in the hell of Auschwitz, Charles Palant has spent his life defending human rights and fighting against racism and anti-Semitism. He died on February 26, 2016 at the age of 93. The Shoah Memorial paid tribute to him.
Testimony of Charles Palant, from the "Last Witnesses" campaign carried out by the Shoah Memorial and the City of Paris in 2004.
Born in 1922 in the Parisian Belleville of all immigrants – his parents had fled Poland from the pogroms –, Charles Palant was involved very early in the fight against fascism. In July 1941, he crossed the demarcation line towards Lyon, where he joined his family and many friends. Charles Palant was 21 years old when he was arrested by the Gestapo in August 1943 for possession of false papers, with his mother and sister, while his older brother escaped by chance.
First imprisoned in Fort-Montluc, all three were then deported to Drancy and then to Auschwitz, from where his mother and sister would not return. "We understand that if we give in to grief, we are dead," he says. Charles Palant recounts the "descent into animality" of the deportees from Buna-Monowitz (Auschwitz III), his selection for the gas chamber to which, sick, he escapes thanks to the memory of the jokes of a Lyonnais singer, his Death March with 60,000 deportees at the beginning of 1945, then the train to Buchenwald (Germany), and the insurrection of this camp, on the eve of the arrival of the American liberators. After 650 days in hell, Charles Palant did not feel "the enemy of anyone, not even the Germans".
"At the end of the most abominable failure of the human organization", he embarked on the fight for the construction of a "better world".
Charles Palant was co-founder of MRAP in 1949 - at the time "Movement against Racism, Anti-Semitism and for Peace" - he assured its leadership by successively holding the positions of Secretary General and President. Later, in 1977, he was responsible for the change of name of MRAP, which became "Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples". Until 2015, he also represented the MRAP at the CNCDH (National Consultative Commission on Human Rights).
