Henri Borlant, French survivor who endured Auschwitz as a teen, dies at 97
Of the approximately 6,000 French Jewish children under age 16 who were sent to Auschwitz in 1942, at the height of Nazi deportations, he alone returned.

December 12, 2024 at 2:01 p.m. EST
50 minutes ago


Henri Borlant in an undated photograph. (Borlant family)

By Emily Langer

Henri Borlant was 15 when he was arrested in France in 1942, forced onto a cattle car and deported with his father and two of his siblings to Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi killing center in occupied Poland. ... He alone among them was alive and reunited with the rest of their family when World War II ended in 1945. And 50 years later, he learned he was alone among French Holocaust survivors in another sense.

Dr. Borlant, a retired physician who died Dec. 3 in Paris at 97, was one of approximately 6,000 French Jewish children under the age of 16 who were sent to Auschwitz in 1942, at the height of Nazi deportations.

Of the children in that group, he was the only one to survive, according to Serge Klarsfeld, a fellow survivor who became internationally known after the war as a Nazi hunter and assiduously documented the fate of individual Jews deported from France.

A representative of the Mémorial de la Shoah, the Holocaust museum in Paris, verified that there were children from subsequent French deportations who survived the Holocaust, but none other than Dr. Borlant from the convoys that left in 1942.

{snip}


Dr. Borlant in Paris in 2015. (Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images)

{snip}


Dr. Borlant in 1945. (Borlant family)

{snip}

By Emily Langer
Emily Langer is a reporter on The Washington Post’s obituaries desk. She writes about extraordinary lives in national and international affairs, science and the arts, sports, culture, and beyond. She previously worked for the Outlook and Local Living sections.follow on X@emilylangerWP