Tribute to Claude Hampel, who passed away on 11 November 2016

Claude Hampel during the Yom HaShoah ceremony at the Shoah Memorial © J-M Lebaz

Claude Hampel, a Holocaust survivor and survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, was a journalist and writer. Creator of the Yiddish Notebooks, he had also received the title of Knight of the Legion of Honor and Knight of Arts and Letters. Claude Hampel passed away on November 11, 2016 at 73 years old. The Shoah Memorial pays tribute to this intellectual with an exemplary career. All our thoughts go to his family and loved ones.

Born in 1943 in the Warsaw ghetto, Claude Hampel was initially named Casimir.  His survival, Claude owes it to a couple of Poles, the Michlskis, who today count among the 6,000 Polish Righteous among the Nations, who save him in extremis from the ghetto, making him one of the youngest survivors.

«I am the child of silence, of daily anguish»

Claude Hampel and his mother are then welcomed by the Michalski couple who offer them refuge in the Warsaw region. He is almost two years old when Germany capitulates and his mother meets Jacob Hampel, who will become his father. They then flee communist Poland for human rights France.

After having worked in various small jobs in the 60s, Claude became a journalist in the Yiddish press at Unzer Stimme, then at Unzer Wortt, he brilliantly ensures the continuity of Yiddish in his militant life as well as in his personal life.  He will not rest, all his life, to honor the memory of a language that almost disappeared.

Founder of the Yiddish Cahiers, he also oversaw the editorial office of the Cahiers du Cercle Bernard Lazare.

Claude Hampel quickly embodies the emblem of a desire for survival and memory: he ensures and preserves through his work, the presence of the identity of the Yiddish language. Man of letters and culture with open and generous ideas, he courageously maintains the existence of a threatened language.

In October 2011, he launched a weekly Yiddish language program on Radio J.

During the presentation of the Idel Korman prize, Charles Dobzynski paid tribute to him: "Claude Hampel is one of the symbols of hope, of fidelity to an ideal and a heritage."

All his life, Claude Hampel has defended and maintained the memory of Yiddish, whose maintenance is in his eyes a duty and a mission of honor. He knew how to cultivate this root of memory which is also a root of hope.