Henri

Henri Rosen

Henri was born in 1933 in the small Polish town of Demblin, near Warsaw. He was the youngest of three siblings. His mother, Dina, and father, Aaron, owned and ran a family construction business started by Henri's grandfather. As a child, Henri grew up in a well-to-do family, full of happiness. Henri was 6 when the war broke out, and the first bombing raids were heard in town. But it was in 1942 that his family's fate changed when his sister and brother were deported to Sobibor. He ended up alone with his parents. A few months later, his father was summoned by the Kommandatur. He went there but never came back. Henri would never know whether his father was killed on the spot or deported. Then Henri, his mother and his grandfather were arrested. They were deported to a labor camp near Demblin before being sent to the Czestochowa camp in 1944. He was then sent to Buchenwald, where he met Elie Wiesel, with whom he shared the same barracks. His time in the camps ended in the Terezin camp on 8 May 1945, the day of the German surrender, when he was finally liberated. After his liberation, Henri was reunited with his mother in Poland, who had miraculously survived, and together they left for France, the country in which he would build his life, never ceasing to seek happiness.