Henri F

Henri Frischer

The only son of Polish parents, Henri was born in Paris in 1938. In 1942, when anti-Jewish laws forbade his father to work as a furrier, the family decided to leave for the Free Zone separately; first the father, then the mother and son, while they gathered a few things together. But it didn’t go as planned, and Henri and his mother were stopped by the French police at the Chalon-sur-Saône station. Along with seven other children, the little boy narrowly escaped deportation thanks to the intervention of the Red Cross, to whom his mother entrusted him on a train station platform. Sent to Lyon, he was reunited with his father, from whom he was soon separated, once again for safety reasons. Henri took refuge with farmers in the Vercors mountains (southeast of France) while his father hid in an attic in town. After the war, father and son returned to their Paris apartment, where there was nothing left. They eventually learned that Henri's mother, sent to Pithiviers from Chalon-sur-Saône, had been deported to Auschwitz and gassed on arrival on August 1, 1942.