Yvette
Levy

Yvette Levy

Born in 1926 from Alsatian parents, Yvette grew up in the suburbs of Paris in a close-knit family of three children. As a member of the Éclaireurs Israélites de France (French Jewish scouting organization), she was arrested with her group on July 21, 1944. She was just 18 years old. She was sent to Drancy, then to Auschwitz, on convoy 77, the last one to leave France. For this modest young woman, finding herself naked in front of men and seeing all those naked women's bodies around her was a very uncomfortable feeling. She spent a year in deportation, first in Birkenau, then in a camp in Czechoslovakia, which was quickly abandoned by the Nazis and from which she left to find her way home on her own. When she finally arrived in Paris, at the Lutetia Hotel, she knew nothing of her parents' fate, not even if they had been arrested. She sent a telegram to their address, like throwing a bottle in the sea. When Yvette’s mother came to meet her, Yvette didn’t recognize her. She was thin and her hair had turned all white. As for Yvette, she weighed 36 kilos (79 pounds) and was also unrecognizable. Eventually, the two women fell into each other's arms and left the hotel together by subway for home. When Yvette’s father first saw her, he didn’t recognize her. So as not to cause them any more pain, Yvette didn’t tell her parents anything about what she had gone through. However, she was one of the first former deportees to talk about her experiences, keeping the promise she had made to herself in the camp. After the war, Yvette was concerned that no man would want to marry her, a deportee who was traumatized by her close encounters with death. But five years later, she married Robert Lévy, with whom she had a daughter. Yvette feels now that her trauma affected her daughter more than she expected. She devotes much of her time and energy to sharing her experiences. [...+]

My visit to Yvette

Clips

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Yvette

« I saw a lady with white hair, whom I didn't recognize. Mom didn't recognize me either: we hadn't seen each other for a year. »
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Yvette

« The smell was unbreathable. We sniffed burnt flesh, it stank. »

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.

Other witnesses