Paulette Sarcey née Szlifke, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, died on Monday 4 May in Montreuil.
Paulette was born on 11 April 1924 in Paris to Polish-Jewish parents who had just arrived in France. His brother Robert joined the family in 1934. The family lives in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. Paulette frequents the patronage stemming from the progressive Jewish movement close to the MOI.
In 1940, at the age of 16, she joined the Communist Youth and took her first steps in the Resistance alongside Henri Krasucki and Marcel Rayman. Warned of the imminence of the Vel d'hiv roundup, Paulette has time to warn her parents to take shelter and take her brother to the countryside.
Paulette continued her activities in the Resistance until May 1943 when she was arrested following a raid by the Special Brigades of the Police Prefecture with many comrades. Incarcerated at the small Depot of the Prefecture of Police, assaulted during her interrogation, Paulette is transferred to the Rothschild Hospital where a complacent doctor declares that she must be operated on urgently.
As soon as she recovered, Paulette was transferred to the Drancy camp where she reunited with her comrades. All were deported by convoy 55 on 23 June 1943 to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Paulette received number 46650.
After the quarantine, she was first assigned to the Crow’s Commando before being transferred to the
During the death marches in January 1945, she was evacuated to the camps of Ravensbrück and then Neustadt-Glewe where she was liberated on 2 May 1945.
On her return to Paris in June 1945, Paulette finds her parents and her brother Robert, who survived hidden all the duration of the war. In 1947, she married Max Swiczarczyk-Sarcey, a comrade met at the patronage and active resistance within the FTP MOI.
Paulette Sarcey was a Knight of the Legion of Honor and decorated with the Military Medal.
The Shoah Memorial offers its sincere condolences to Michelle and Claude Sarcey, her children, and their family, and salutes the memory of a tireless activist within the Association of Former Jewish Deportees of France alongside Henry Bulawko, UJRE and MRJ-MOI.
The story of Paulette is told in the book published in 2015,
You can review his testimony in January 2018.
