Claude Bloch, French survivor of Auschwitz camp, dies aged 95

The last survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp living in Lyon, died Sunday aged 95, the city's mayor said. He paid tribute to Claude Bloch’s commitment to passing down the memory of the Holocaust to future generations.

Claude Bloch, centre, right, who was deported when he was a child, at a ceremony at the WWII Montluc prison, outside Lyon with President Emmanuel Macron, 8 May 2023. © Laurent Cipriani/AP

“A survivor of Auschwitz, he was a transmitter of memories to young generations throughout his life,” Lyon mayor Gregory Doucet wrote on social media platform X.

In June 1944, at the age of 15, Bloch was arrested along with his mother and grandfather by the pro-Nazi head of the Lyon militia, Paul Touvier, for being Jewish, and detained for a month at the Montluc prison in Lyon.

He was deported with his mother to Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of the last convoy of cattle cars that left Drancy with 1,000 adults and 300 children, at the end of July.

Bloch’s mother was immediately sent to the gas chambers. He survived the harsh winter of 1944, and was freed when the camp was liberated on 10 May 1945.

He returned to Lyon to live with his maternal grandmother, who had avoided arrest.

Bloch was part of the civil case against Touvier, who was arrested in 1989 and sentenced to life in prison in 1994 for his participation in the Holocaust - the first Frenchman convicted of crimes against humanity.

Jews getting off a train in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp on May 27, 1944 Yad Vashem Archives/AFP/File

Scar of history

Since 2021, after the death of Benjamin Orenstein, Bloch became the last concentration camp survivor living in Lyon.

In May, he joined President Emmanuel Macron at the Montluc prison for a commemoration of the Resistance hero Jean Moulin.

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There he described the conditions of his detention at Auschwitz, sleeping on the floor “battling fleas”. The worst part was the mornings when prisoners were called, with or without luggage.

“When it was without luggage we knew it meant that they were leaving the prison to be shot that day” or to be transferred elsewhere, he said.

Macron on Monday wrote that Bloch “carried in him the scar of history”, and that was “up to all of us to continue to transmit" the memories of the Holocaust.

(with AFP)