Death of Claude Bloch at 95: Emmanuel Macron pays tribute to “a conduit of the memory of the Shoah”: Femme Actuelle Le MAG

With him a part of History flies away… Sunday December 31, 2023, Claude Bloch, last survivor of Auschwitz in Lyon, died at the age of 95. The next day, it was on X (formerly Twitter) that Grégoire Doucet, mayor of Lyon, announced the sad news. “It is with deep sadness that I learned this evening of the death of Claude Bloch. A survivor of Auschwitz, he was a bearer of memory to younger generations throughout his life. My most sincere condolences to his family and his loved ones”, he wrote. A disappearance which shocked Internet users, many of whom expressed themselves in the comments section. “Met during Heritage Days at the Montluc Memorial. Like others, I was moved when listening to his testimony. He was so precious in this work of Memory… May he rest in peace“ ; “Peace to his soul. May the very concrete and advanced project, of which he spoke about the barracks at the National Prison Memorial of Montluc, be realized in his memory, in particular”we can read.

Emmanuel Macron’s tribute to Claude Bloch

On X, the President of the Republic wanted to offer his condolences. “Survivor of Auschwitz and the Montluc prison, Claude Bloch carried within him the tear of History. All his life, he was a transmitter of the memory of the Shoah. It is up to all of us to continue to pass it on. My sincere condolences to his loved ones.”, he wrote. In May 2023, during the tribute to Jean Moulin, Emmanuel Macron met Claude Bloch in Lyon, at the National Memorial of Montluc Prison. As a reminder, Claude Bloch was arrested with his mother in June 1944 in Crépieux-la-Pape (Rhône) and transferred to Montluc prison. The latter were part of the last convoy to Auschwitz, on July 31, 1944. Released and saved from the camp on May 10, 1945, Claude Bloch then returned to live with his grandmother in Lyon. With emotion, it is for News Lyon that he remembered in November 2022: “At 15, you don’t tell yourself that you’re going to die. You can’t believe it. All you can do is keep your spirits up. I convinced myself that I would come home. I told myself that ‘There was no reason why it couldn’t happen when in truth there were 10,000’.