Guy

Guy Granat

Born in Poland in 1925, Guy was deported to Auschwitz in July 1944, along with his brother Samuel and his father Léon. They were together until Léon was murdered in the Dora camp. Guy and his brother were then transferred to Bergen-Belsen. When they were liberated from the Bergen-Belsen camp, they knew nothing of the fate of their mother and sister. When an uncle told them that they were alive and in Poland, Guy decided to go and look for them. The war was barely over, and the journey was a real ordeal but he managed to find them. They owed their lives to the farmers who had hidden them at the end of the war. They finally reunited with the rest of the family in France. In the small room of the furnished hotel where he lived for a long time, Guy had the recurring nightmare that he was being suffocated by a quilt. He would hardly ever talk about what he had been through. It was not because he was shy, but more because he was concerned, he couldn’t find the right words to express what he had lived through. That’s why he and his brother decided to keep silent about their past experiences. He then put all his energy into burying those painful memories. After he got married, his family and his work became the only things that mattered to him. He was a hard-working professional, spending long hours at work even on weekends, but it made him successful. The couple's four children knew that their mother was a former hidden child and their father was a deportee, but at home they never asked questions because they knew they wouldn’t get answers. One day, however, one of his eight grandchildren asked him about the number tattooed on his arm. He opened up a little but didn’t offer too many details, because according to him "speaking about it doesn't do any good".
On the other hand, Guy always used humor in his life. When one day, he was asked where his perfect German came from, he replied that he had learned it at the best university: Auschwitz-Birkenau.