Tribute to Liliane Esrail who died this Friday, May 1st in Paris.

Liliane Esrail née Badour, survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, died on Friday 1^er May in Paris.

Left Photo – Liliane Badour Esrail some time before her deportation. Photo Credit: Memorial of the Shoah/coll. Raphael Esrail

Phtoto Droite – Liliane Badour Esrail, 2011 – Photo Credit: IAK/Michéle Dèodat

Liliane Badour was born on June 9, 1924 in Biarritz. Her parents disappeared while she was a teenager. She is welcomed into the home of her maternal grandparents, Jews of Russian origin, hoteliers in Biarritz. At his side, his two young brothers, Henri born in 1927 and René born in 1931. The three children are baptized Catholic. The baptism of the youngest, René, having taken place in 1941 is not recognized by the authorities of the Vichy regime. It is this young boy that the Feldgendarmerie comes to arrest on January 10, 1944. Refusing to let him leave, Liliane is taken along with her brother Henri. After internment at the Bayonne prison, they are transferred to the Drancy camp on January 25.

At the Drancy camp, she meets Raphaël Esrail, a young student arrested in Lyon for Resistance. All four were deported on 3 February 1944 to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp by Convoi 67. Henri and René are gassed upon their arrival, Liliane enters the camp in Birkenau and receives registration number 75127. First assigned to the Aussenkommando, she joined the Union Werke in May and formed a solidarity group there with notably Ida Grinspan and Léa Rohatyn.

During the death marches in January 1945, she was evacuated to the camps of Ravensbrück then Neustadt-Glewe where she was liberated on May 2, 1945.

On her return to Biarritz, at the end of May 1945, she finds her grandmother again, her grandfather having died during his deportation. In January 1948, she married Raphaël Esrail.

Liliane Esrail was Knight of the Legion of Honor and decorated with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Shoah Memorial offers its sincere condolences to Raphaël Esrail and their family, and salutes the memory of a figure from the Union of Auschwitz deportees.

The story of Liliane and Raphaël is told in the book published in 2017, L'espérance d'un baiser chez Robert Laffont.

An exhibition presented in Berlin in May 2011 by the International Auschwitz Committee "Mein Assiste, my brother, my sister – my brother, my sister" retraced his journey.

His testimony can be found on the website of the Auschwitz Deportees Union: Memories of the Deportation, 1939-1945 http://memoiresdesdeportations.org/fr/personne/esrail-liliane