Henri & Betty
Koprak

Henri & Betty Koprak

Like many Polish Jews, Henri's parents chose to live in France, the land of freedom. One morning in July 1942, Henri and his brother woke up in the family apartment in Niort to find that their parents had disappeared. Neighbors who had witnessed the arrest came to fetch the two boys and entrusted them to the Assistance publique, from where they were sent to a convent. The day the Germans arrived at the convent, the nuns had the presence of mind to pass them off as sick and sent them to a hospital, thus saving their lives. They were then taken in by the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants - a French Jewish humanitarian organization) until the end of the war. Orphaned, they both grew up in foster homes. Betty was one years old when her father was deported in 1942. The following year, her mother entrusted her to the care of an aunt and uncle living in the Dordogne (southwest of France), who were in turn arrested. A German soldier, present at the arrest, entrusted Betty to the care of neighbors, who treated her as their own daughter. At the end of the war, her mother, who had spent a year in a camp, came to fetch her, much to the despair of the little girl and her adopted family. Betty was five at the time, and had no memories of her mother. Over the years, she stayed in touch with her adoptive family. [...+]

My visit to Henri & Betty

Clips

See

Henri & Betty

« My mother was a stranger to me. »
See

Henri & Betty

« When I first visited Auschwitz it was in 1949. I was 13. »
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Henri & Betty

« I didn't look, fearing I would see my parents' name. I didn't want to look. »
See

Henri & Betty

« Henri and I had a the same history. We could understand each other. »

Livres

Sophie Nahum
Les Derniers
Enfants Cachés

Of the 70,000 Jewish children living in France in 1939, around 11,000 perished in the camps, while the rest miraculously survived the war, often in hiding, in convents, in the countryside, sometimes in closets. Today, only a few of them can testify to their experience of hiding, their loss of identity, the uprooting from their family environment and the silence that followed the end of the war. History has been slow to make room for them in the hierarchy of victims.

Sophie Nahum went to meet the last surviving hidden children of the Holocaust to hear what they had to say. These men and women speak out here, sometimes for the first time, and it is the children they were that we hear.

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