Tribute to Jacques Saurel
Jacques Saurel passed away at the age of 90, on March 28, 2023.
The Shoah Memorial pays tribute to him and offers its condolences to his family. Secretary-General of the Bergen Belsen camp association since 2003, he was an officer of the Legion of Honor.
Indefatigable witness, Jacques Saurel has accompanied the Shoah Memorial on numerous occasions in his educational work, of history and memory.
Jacques Saurel, whose birth name is Isaac Jacques Szwarcenberg, was born in Paris on February 19, 1933. Her parents, Herszeck and Berthe Szwarcenberg, are Polish Jews who arrived in France in the 1920s. The couple has three other children: Irène born in 1931, Roger in 1934 and Alice in 1936.
Left photo: Portrait of Jacques Saurel, 2007. © Photo Evvy Eisen/Mémorial de la Shoah
Right photo: Berthe Szwarcenberg with her children, from left to right, Jacques, Alice, Roger and Irène a few months before their deportation, Paris, 1943. © Memorial of the Shoah/coll. Jacques Saurel.
When the war breaks out, his father voluntarily enlists in the French army. He is taken prisoner in the Ardennes and sent to a stalag in Germany.
As the wife and children of a prisoner of war, the Szwarcenberg family is protected by the Geneva Conventions. But on the night of February 3 to 4, 1944, Jacques and his family are arrested at their home. Only little Alice, hidden in a family in the Sarthe, escapes the raid. They are sent to the camp of Drancy.
On 3 May 1944, they were deported to the Bergen-Belsen camp with hundreds of other women and children of prisoners of war.
Jacques tells the story of his deportation and return to France on June 23, 1945, in a testimony recorded in 2016 by the Shoah Memorial.
Discover the testimony of Jacques Saurel
