Sarah Montard née Lichtsztejn, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, died on February 21, 2022.

Sarah Montard was born on March 16, 1928 in the free city of Danzig and declared Polish. Her parents, Moïse and Maria, née Korenbaum, were married in 1927. They are secular and anarchist. The father is a journalist, the mother a seamstress. In October 1930, the family moved to Paris and settled in 1932 in the 20th.^e arrondissement.

Moïse was mobilized in 1939 in the detachment of the Polish Army in France.

Sarah was sent in January 1940 to a house of the Œuvre de secours aux enfants, on the Côte d'Azur at Boulouris, where her mother came to pick her up in July.

On 23 July 1941, his father was arrested in Paris and interned at the Pithiviers camp in Loiret, from where he managed to escape in early September 1941. He then went into hiding.

On July 15, 1942, a friend from the high school warns Sarah that a mass arrest is being prepared. But Sarah and her mother are arrested the next day by the French police. At 14, Sarah’s childhood changes hands. Brought to the Vel’d'Hiv, they manage to escape from it the same day. They, in turn, go underground. Sarah nevertheless continues her education at the girls' high school of the Vincennes course in Paris.

On 24 May 1944, at 7 a.m., two plain-clothes inspectors come to arrest Sarah and her mother following a letter of denunciation sent by a neighbor. Brought to the courthouse, they were interned the next day at the Drancy camp.

On May 30, 1944, Sarah and her mother were deported in convoy 75 to the Auschwitz camp Auschwitz, by convoy no. 75.  They arrive on 2 June on the ramp of Birkenau. They are assigned to the external Kommandos where they carry out exhausting work. Separated from her mother at the end of October, Sarah was sent to Auschwitz-I.

On 18 January 1945, the camp was evacuated. During the "death march" she found her mother and they arrived together at the Bergen-Belsen camp.  Sarah will notably run into Anne Frank.

Released by the British army on 15 April 1945, they returned to Paris on 24 May 1945, exactly one year after their arrest. They find Moses who had been able to hide.

Sarah worked between 1952 and 1956 at the Reuters agency, then headed the secretariat of a basic research laboratory at the Museum of Natural History. She joined the Amicale d'Auschwitz in 1946 and the Association des Fils et Filles de déportés juifs de France in 1979, attending alongside Serge Klarsfeld at the Cologne trial in 1980. Since 1985, Sarah has testified on numerous occasions, notably at the Shoah Memorial, and accompanied dozens of study trips to Auschwitz.

Sarah Montard was made an officer of the Legion of Honor and a commander of the Palmes académiques.

Sarah Montard published her testimony in 2011 with the editions Le Manuscrit in the collection Témoignages de la Shoah, with the support of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah: "Chassez les papillons noirs. Story of a survivor of the Nazi death camps.”

The Shoah Memorial pays tribute to a great memory activist and sends its condolences to her children and loved ones.