Raphaël Esrail, a survivor of the Auschwitz camp and president of the Union of Auschwitz deportees, died in Lannion on Saturday, January 22, 2022, at the age of 96.
Raphael and Liliane Esrail, 1997
Photo Evvy Eisen, Shoah Memorial
Born on May 10, 1925 in Magnesia in Turkey, Raphaël Esrail arrives in Lyon the following year with his family, where his father runs a hosiery shop. At the age of 11, he enters the Israelite Scouts of France.
During the Second World War, a member of the Jewish resistance within the Sixth in Lyon where he made fake papers, he was arrested on January 8, 1944. Tortured at the headquarters of the Gestapo at the Military Health Service School and then interned in Montluc prison, he was transferred on 25 January to the Drancy camp, then deported on 3 February by convoy 67 to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Raphaël Esrail is assigned to the Auschwitz-I camp and joins theUnion Werke. Evacuated on January 18, 1945, he follows the "death marches" in Discowitz, at the Gross-Rosen camp and then from Dachau. He is released in Tutzing on the 1ster May 1945 by the Americans.
He returned to Lyon on May 26, 1945. Raphaël met and married in January 1948 a young woman he had met in Drancy, Liliane Badour.
After studying at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon and becoming an engineer, Raphaël Esrail began a long career at Gaz de France until 1988 where he was notably responsible for professional training.
Engaged in the Auschwitz Association from the 1980s, he became its secretary general in 1990. In 2008, he took over the presidency of the Auschwitz deportees' union of which he was the builder, federating the various associations of survivors.
Raphaël Esrail was promoted commander of the Legion of Honor in April 2016. He holds the Knight’s Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, awarded in March 2013 at the German embassy in Paris. He published in 2017 by Robert Laffont, his autobiography entitled 'L'espérance d'un baiser', written with Isabelle Ernot.
Tireless animator of the UDA, he had multiplied projects of transmission and education, through trips to Auschwitz, testimonies and even multimedia projects, in particular in 2009 the DVD "Memory tomorrow".
The Shoah Memorial presents to his family and friends its sincere condolences and salutes the memory of a great witness as well as a major player in the transmission to new generations, creator of innovative projects at the service of history, memory and pedagogy.
Testimony of Raphaël Esrail – 26 January 2020
In conversation with Ali Rebeihi, producer at France Inter.
