Jacques Saurel passed away at the age of 90, on March 28, 2023.
The Shoah Memorial pays tribute to him and offers his condolences to his family. Secretary-General of the Bergen Belsen camp association since 2003, he was an officer in the Legion of Honour.
A tireless witness, Jacques Saurel has accompanied the Shoah Memorial many times in his work on education, history, and memory.
Jacques Saurel, born Isaac Jacques Szwarcenberg, was born in Paris on 19 February 1933. His parents, Herszeck and Berthe Szwarcenberg, were Polish Jews who arrived in France in the 1920s. The couple had three other children: Irene born in 1931, Roger in 1934 and Alice in 1936.
When the war broke out, his father volunteered for the French army. He was 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 3 to 4 February 1944, Jacques and his family were arrested at their home. Only little Alice, hidden in a family in the Sarthe, escapes the roundup. They are sent to the camp at 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 recounts his deportation and return to France on 23 June 1945, in a testimony recorded in 2016 by the Shoah Memorial.
