Les Derniers - Lili

Lili
Leignel

Lili Leignel

Lili was born in Northern France on September 15, 1932, to Hungarian parents who had fled antisemitism in their homeland. After the birth of two sons, Robert and André, the family settled in Roubaix. From 1942, as required by law for all Jewish children over the age of six, Lili had to wear a yellow star. On Lili’s mother's birthday, which is on October 27, 1943, soldiers stormed into the house at three o’clock in the morning to take them away. The father was separated from the rest of the family; Lili, her mother and two brothers were sent to Ravensbrück, then Bergen-Belsen. At the end of the war, the three children were sent back to France, but their mother stayed behind as she was suffering from typhus, and was too ill for the trip. With no news of their father, they were taken in by a foster family, then by one of their aunts. Very weakened, they were then sent to a convalescent home in Hendaye. Months later, their mother finally meets them there, despite her extreme weakness, and takes them back to Northern France. She then learned that her husband had been shot at Buchenwald just two or three days before the end of the war. Lili got married and had one daughter. For a long time, she didn’t talk about the war. It was only much later, when she heard the statements of the first Holocaust deniers, that she decided to tell her story. When I met her, she was the only survivor from her region still able to testify. [...+]

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