Born on 2 June 1924 in Strasbourg, Liliane Lieber joined the Éclaireurs israélites de France in 1931 and took the name of totem «Luciole obligeante».
On September 3, 1939, Liliane and her parents left Strasbourg and settled in Vichy. Liliane attended school in Cusset. In November 1941, Liliane and her mother, Germaine, are forced to leave and join Grenoble, where the family lives. His father, Ernest, managed to emigrate to the United States and tried unsuccessfully to bring his wife and daughter.
In August 1942, during the roundups in the southern zone, Liliane was recruited by Robert Gamzon to participate in the "Sixth", the clandestine network of EIF. She became a social worker for the region of Grenoble, hiding teenagers in danger, providing them with false documents, maintaining contact between them, and leading some towards the Swiss border at Annemasse. In the autumn of 1942, she went to the camp of Rivesaltes to lead a rescue operation of children initiated by Andrée Salomon.
In the spring of 1944, she and her mother moved to Switzerland. At the Liberation, she returned to France and found the teenagers in her care, many of whom had become orphans, to continue supporting them.
She married in December 1944 with Théo Klein, met in the Resistance, with whom she had three sons before the couple separated.
Since the Second World War, Liliane Klein-Lieber will not stop militating. In 1965, she participated in the founding of the Women’s Cooperation, of which she was president for fifteen years until 2003, and in the creation of the National Volunteer Center. She represents Girl Scouting at UNESCO and also sits on the National Council of French Women. She chairs the Association of Hidden Children, created in 1991, in the 2000s. She is also an active member of the Jewish Resistance Elders in France.
Liliane Klein-Lieber is a Knight of the Legion of Honor and holder of the Volunteer Combatant’s Cross of the Resistance.
The Shoah Memorial pays tribute to the memory of an exceptional woman, humanist and committed in daily life, a figure of the female cause, the memory of the Shoah and the Resistance. The Shoah Memorial, whose teams have had the honor of working with her for decades, presents its most sincere condolences to her sons and loved ones.
On the occasion of Yom HaShoah, Liliane Klein-Lieber participated in a meeting at the Memorial on April 12, 2018:
