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

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

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

Very young, he campaigns 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 inscriptions on the walls, leaflets and newspaper launches in cinemas, markets, and in 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 in Berchtesgaden.

“While I am standing on my chariot. It is here that the little Jew that I was, crosses, almost stopped, a truck of senior German officer prisoners who look at us with contempt and I shout to them while beating my chest: "Ich bin ein Olique!".

Back in Paris, he learns the assassination 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 War Cross with citation, the Bronze Star, the Medal of the Volunteer Fighters of the Resistance, the Medal of the Escapees, of the Medal of the Resistant Internees and of 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, particularly that of the commitment of the Jews in the Resistance and the liberation of France. He will be the project manager of the Jews in Resistance database for the Shoah Memorial. For nearly 20 years, he will lead the Tuesday afternoon sessions at the Shoah Memorial, to continue collecting from the families who survived the Holocaust 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.