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Only Survivor of 6,000 Jewish Children Deported From France Dies, Aged 97
The sign “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”) is pictured at the main gate of the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland. Photo: Reuters/Pawel Ulatowski
JNS.org — Henri Borlant, the sole survivor of the 6,000 Jewish children under the age of 16 who were deported from France to Auschwitz in 1942, died on Dec. 3, aged 97.
Borlant spoke often of his experiences to schools. In 2011, he published a book, Merci d’avoir survécu (Thank you for surviving). The title came from a note he received from a 15-year-old boy who heard the story of his deportation.
The Shoah Memorial saluted his memory in a tweet.
Le Mémorial de la Shoah présente ses sincères condoléances à son épouse Hella, à leurs filles et à l’ensemble de sa famille.
Le Mémorial de la Shoah salue la mémoire d’une figure de la mémoire de la Shoah en France, profondément humble et engagée.#hommage #temoin #shoah pic.twitter.com/LBqAPQIudF
— Mémorial de la Shoah (@Shoah_Memorial) December 4, 2024
Born Hirsch Borlant in Paris on June 5, 1927, Henri was the fourth of 10 children. His parents were naturalized French citizens from Russia.
In 1939, the French authorities evacuated Paris’s 13th arrondissement and in August, his family fled to Maine-et-Loire in Anjou in western France.
Borlant recounted that they were warmly welcomed by the locals and had no idea what lay in store for them. As a precaution, the children, who were educated at a Catholic school, were baptized. Borlant became a Catholic.
On July 15, 1942, his mother, brother Bernard, sister Denise and he were arrested by German soldiers. “They had a list and took everyone who was between 15 and 50 years old,” he said.
Two days later, his mother, Rachel, was released and replaced by his father, Aron. No explanation was given, according to an interview he gave to the Maine-et-Loire region website.
On July 20, 1942, Henri, his brother, sister and father were crammed into cattle cars with 824 others and deported in convoy No. 8 from Angers to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Shoah Memorial said.
As he was transported, he tossed out a note: “Dear Mom, it seems that we are going to Ukraine to harvest.” The letter reached his mother thanks to a railway worker.
Upon arrival at Auschwitz, his sister was killed immediately. His father and brother also would not survive the camp.
“Our extermination was planned, programmed,” he wrote in his book. “We knew that we were living our last moments. The hope that all this would be known one day fueled our will to survive.”
As the Red Army closed in, he was transferred by train to the Sachsenhausen camp, then sent to the Oranienburg camp to work in the Heinkel aircraft factory. In November 1944, Henri was transferred to Ohrdruf-Buchenwald, a Buchenwald annex camp.
Borlant managed to escape from Ohrdruf-Buchenwald shortly before the Americans arrived, hiding with an anti-Nazi meat seller.
He was repatriated to France on April 16, 1945, and reunited with his mother and siblings, who were not deported and survived.
Borlant suffered from tuberculosis on his return, but managed to study medicine and become a doctor.
Like many survivors, he kept his experiences secret, but in the 1990s, he began to speak of what he endured and collect testimonies within the association Témoignage pour mémoire. He was a member of the Foundation for the Memory of the Deportation and served on the educational commission of the Shoah Memorial.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.