Tribute to Lazare, aka Laurent Goldberg, who passed away on June 25, 2023. 

Laurent Goldberg was born on 25 May 1923 in Minsk-Mazowiecki, Poland. At the age of 9 months, with his mother, Szyfra and his elder brother, Maurice, he left Poland to join his father, Lejb, already in France.

“In 1938, after many difficulties, we are finally naturalized French to our great joy.”

At a very young age, he campaigned within the Communist Youth “and the news of the Munich Agreements and the German-Soviet Pact revolts me”. At the end of July 1940, he joined the resistance.

“Our job was to make wall inscriptions, leaflet and newspaper launches in cinemas, markets, and on the streets with all the risks that this entailed.”

At the end of November 1943, he crossed the Spanish border under extremely difficult conditions in the hope of joining the Free French Forces. But as soon as we arrive in Spain, we are arrested and spend five months in the prisons of Franco.” After his release, he became a rifleman in the 2nd Armored Division of General Leclerc. In August 1944, he landed with his division on the beaches of Normandy. He participated in the liberation of Paris and the campaigns of Alsace and Germany up to the "eagle’s nest", Hitler’s residence at Berchtesgaden.

“While I am standing on my chariot. It is here that the little Jew I was, almost at a standstill, comes across a truck of senior German officers who are prisoners and look at us with contempt. I shout to them, slapping my chest: "Ich bin ein Juden!"

Back in Paris, he learns the murder of his parents and his grandmother Rachel Biernat whom he adored. “My father died of exhaustion in Mauthausen and my mother in Terezin, from typhus.” With his wife, Suzanne, they will have two children and seven grandchildren.

Laurent Goldberg is decorated with the Legion of Honor in a military capacity, the Military Medal, the Croix de guerre with citation, the Bronze Star, the Medal of the Volunteer Fighters of the Resistance, the Medal of the Escaped, of the Medal of Internee Resistance and the Presidential Unit Citation USA.

Laurent Goldberg is one of the founders of the association Mémoire Juive de Paris in 1986, memory in images of Jewish immigration in France. He was a tireless activist for the transmission of memory, especially that of the commitment of the Jews in the Resistance and the liberation of France. He will be the master of the database of Jews in Resistance for the Shoah Memorial. For nearly 20 years, he will lead the Tuesday afternoon offices at the Shoah Memorial, to continue collecting from families who have survived the Shoah their archives and photographs.

The Shoah Memorial presents to his wife Suzanne and her family its condolences and salutes the memory of a fighter with radiant humanity.