Henri Borlant, sole child survivor of 6,000 deported to Auschwitz, dies at 98

Henri Borlant, the only survivor among 6,000 Jewish children deported from France to Auschwitz in 1942, passed away at the age of 98, according to reports from Le Figaro, Mediapart, and BFMTV. 

A prominent figure in Holocaust education in France, Borlant devoted his later years to ensuring the memory of the Shoah endured.

Born on June 5, 1927, in Paris, Borlant was the fourth of ten children in his family. They lived in the working-class 13th arrondissement until August 1939, when the threat of World War II prompted them to flee to Maine-et-Loire. 

In 1942, at the age of 15, Borlant was arrested alongside his father Aaron, brother Bernard, and sister Denise during a roundup by Nazi forces.

The family was deported to Auschwitz in overcrowded cattle cars, an ordeal Borlant later described in detail.

Upon arrival at the death camp, he was tattooed with the number 51055 on his left arm—a mark he hid for many years. Tragically, his father and siblings perished in the Holocaust.

After surviving Auschwitz, Borlant was transferred between several concentration camps before escaping from Buchenwald in Germany on April 3, 1945, just before it was liberated by American forces.

Educating future generations with his story 

For decades, Borlant remained silent about his experiences, but in his later years, he began sharing his story to educate future generations. 

In 2012, he published his memoir, Thank You for Having Survived. The book became a cornerstone of his efforts to narrate the atrocities of the Holocaust, which he described as his duty to ensure "the whole world would know."

Borlant became a regular speaker at schools, recounting his deportation and survival to young audiences. Anne-Sophie Goepfert, a professor at the Collège de Wintzenheim in Haut-Rhin, described him as "tirelessly dedicated to telling young people about his deportation to Auschwitz at the age of 15."

His humility and commitment were widely recognized. The Shoah Memorial in Paris saluted Borlant as a "figure of the memory of the Shoah in France," emphasizing his "deep humility and dedication."

What was Borlant's survival story?

One of the instances where Borlant's survival was recorded was when he recounted his story to students of the Metz Lycée de la Communication high school in France after Les Chemins de la Mémoire magazine invited him to meet with the school and publish his account. 

The article, which depicts his account of survival, begins with his recounting of how he was separated from his parents and siblings when he was 15 years old to be sent to Auschwitz.

He explained how his father and brother had also been deported and how, after that, Borlant never saw the two again.

Borlant then described his experience in the concentration camp, in which he was forced to endure extreme hunger, beatings, and forced labor. 

Immediately upon his arrival, he said he was told, “This is an extermination camp. You will only get out of here by the crematorium chimney.”

"We were terrified. There was nothing we could do," he explained.

Recounting the hunger he was forced to endure, he said, "You’re starving; you’re no longer entirely human. You’re driven crazy, you lose weight, you overexert yourself. I know the sort of hunger experienced by those skeletal figures you see in archive photographs, reduced to skin and bone, who died as a result."

Borlant also explained the "essential" need to make friends in the camp to survive. 

"No one survived without mutual help. There comes a time when you can’t go on alone. There comes a time - when you have a high fever and need supporting on either side to stop you from collapsing during roll call - when otherwise you just wouldn’t survive," he emphasized.

Borland also explained that he didn't know how he was able to survive the Auschwitz camp, saying that he "would not have bet on me coming through it. And yet, I survived typhoid and tuberculosis. There really is such a thing as the will to live."

When Borlant was liberated in October 1944, during a forced evacuation with the help of locals and American troops. 

"On the night of 3 to 4 April 1945, knowing the Americans were on their way and wanting to avoid a forced evacuation, a death march, I escaped with a fellow prisoner. We went to see the butcher, who gave us prisoners’ clothes. The next day, the Americans arrived. I was free," he shared.

Once he returned to France, he was reunited with his mother and pursued a medical career despite having no prior qualifications.

"I didn’t give up, ever. I became a doctor, a profession I loved," said Borlant.

Borlant's life after the Holocaust 

"One day, I treated a German lady who was referred to me by a friend. She had left her parents after finding out about the Holocaust. She came back sometime later, and I hired her. We fell in love, got married, and had three wonderful daughters," he added.

When Borlant was asked about his thoughts on the Germans in the modern day, he responded, "It is not the Germans but the Nazis I hate, be they French or German. In the camp where I was, there were anti-Nazi Germans. I cannot forget how they risked their lives fighting the Nazis.

He also explained that he considered the tattoo imprinted on his arm by the Nazis his "gold medal."

"I resisted the Nazis’ plan to turn us into smoke and ashes. So, it is something I am proud of. The Nazis burnt us to make us disappear so that no one would know, and I am here now, showing you this tattoo," he said to the students at the time. 

"With this tattoo, I fight racism and antisemitism, and I also defend democracy," Borlant added.