Tribute to Rabbi Daniel Farhi

The Shoah Memorial pays tribute to Rabbi Daniel Farhi, who died in Nice on the night of Sunday 22 to Monday 23 August.

Credits: Shoah Memorial / Photographer Pierre Emmanuel Weck

Great figure of the Jewish community in France, he co-founded the Mouvement juif libéral de France (MJLF) in 1977.

In 1991, this early activist with the Sons and Daughters and Serge and Beate Klarsfeld initiated the reading of the names of Jewish deportees from France on the occasion of Yom Hashoah. The ceremony took place on the site of the Vel d'Hiv and since 2006 at the Shoah Memorial.

Daniel Farhi was born in Paris on 18 November 1941, his parents were born in Izmir, Turkey and immigrated to France in 1922 and 1932.

He has three sisters and one brother: two sisters were born before the war; he and his younger sister during the war, his brother after the war.

During the war, he was hidden with his younger sister Françoise with a Protestant family from Besançon, Georges and Juliette Allenbach, recognized as Righteous among the nations in 1990, where they remained until 1945.

He studied rabbinical studies from 1959 to 1966 in Paris and Jerusalem. He was ordained rabbi in February 1966. From 1975, he joined Beate and Serge Klarsfeld in their fight for the trial of Nazi criminals and demonstrated notably in Cologne against the impunity of Kurt Lischka, where he was arrested and briefly incarcerated. He has since participated alongside them in many actions and ceremonies.

Founder in 1981 of the magazine "Tenoua – Le Mouvement", a bimonthly of liberal Judaism in France, he is the author of many books including Au dernier survivant (Albin Michel 2008) which bears witness to the intense fervor of his commitment to the memory of the Shoah and its spiritual and humanistic elevation: "Wherever it may be, whenever it may be, I will be there with you, the last survivor..." , writes Daniel Farhi. "I promise to be the memory of your memory. I promise you that what you have endured will not be erased from the human consciousness. I promise you this ultimate justice not to let your name or your suffering disappear from universal history...”

Rabbi Daniel Farhi was made a knight in the National Order of Merit in 1988 and an officer of the Legion of Honor in 2015.

The Shoah Memorial salutes his memory and offers its condolences to his wife and three children.