Elie
Buzyn

Elie Buzyn

Élie was born in 1929 in the city of Lodz, which from April 1940 onwards was home to one of Poland's largest ghettos. He survived there with his parents and sister, until they were deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Elie was then 15 years old. His parents were immediately murdered and he lost track of his sister. When the camp was liquidated, he survived the death marches to Buchenwald, where, like Armand Bulwa, he was one of the nine hundred adolescents who survived. After the war, Élie had nothing left. He stayed in France for a while, and managed to find his sister and one of his uncles in Paris, but he couldn't bear staying any longer on the stained soil of Europe. So, he left for Israel to build a new world. After working on a kibbutz for eight years, he decided to return to France to study medicine, and he became an orthopedic surgeon. The fact that his feet froze in Buchenwald after the death march inspired him to study this specialty. He explains how hard it was for him to rebuild himself. To do so, he had to "put on blinders", to prevent him from looking back or even sideways. Thinking back about his past and what he went through would make him want to commit suicide. He had three children with his wife Etty, but he never talked about his deportation with them. He considered that this would be like injecting them with his own pain "intravenously". They knew, but didn't talk about it. And then, time went by and eight grandchildren were born. Time and the birth of new generations made him see things differently. The grandchildren started asking questions. One day, his son announced that he would like to go to Auschwitz to see the place where his grandparents were murdered. Élie decided to go with him. When his grandchildren each turned 15, he took them there. Fifteen is meaningful as it was the age Elie was when he was deported. His grandchildren represent an unbroken chain of generations, something the Nazis tried to destroy, but failed. [...+]

My visit to Elie

Clips

See

Elie

« Telling my children would have been like injecting them with intravenous poison. »
See

Elie

« My father had read Mein Kampf and said what Hitler says doesn't matter, he'll never do it. »

Livres

Sophie Nahum
Les derniers
Rencontre avec les survivants des camps de concentration

There are not many left who can bear witness to the concentration camps. Barely a hundred men and women, who were silent for a long time in the face of a post-war France that was reluctant to listen to them. Survivors thanks above all to a succession of chance events, they were able to rebuild their lives with remarkable courage. Sophie Nahum went to meet the “Last Ones”, these extraordinary resilient people, including Ginette Kolinka and Élie Buzyn, for a series of short documentaries, from which results this choral book. Their testimonies echo each other, while revealing the singularity of each destiny. In this way, the last survivors of the Shoah – 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz – offer us a poignant look at their experiences.

“Touching. These men and women speak from the heart”. Paris Match

“My heart beat for [this] book.” Leila Kaddour.

Sophie Nahum has been making documentaries for over 20 years. After working for the major channels, most notably Arte, she decided to produce her films independently. Young et moi (2015, awarded at FIGRA) was the first, followed by the multi-media project “Les Derniers”, to which she has devoted herself entirely for the past four years.

Photos

Other witnesses