|
|
 |
Max-Marcel BALSAM was born
on May 15, 1931, and his brother Jean-Paul, on June 6, 1933, both in
Paris (12th arr.). They were among the 44 children from the Izieu home.
Their father, Salomon, was born in Warsaw; he was deported on March 27, 1942,
on the first convoy from France, and was murdered in Auschwitz on April 24,
1942. The Balsam family lived in Paris. In addition to the two boys, there were
two girls, Hélène, born on January 16, 1921, in Paris, and
Berthe. The mother, Selma, went with Berthe to Villeurbanne (Rhône), rue
Henri-Rolland; in the meantime, the three other children and their grandmother,
Tauba, were arrested during the big roundup of February 1943. The children,
liberated from Drancy and transferred to the UGIF children's center in the rue
Vauquelin, managed to rejoin their mother in Villeurbanne. Jean-Paul was sent
to Izieu and Max to the Catholic school in Belley. For Easter vacation of 1944,
Max went to visit Jean-Paul in Izieu. Léon Reifman, the brother of the
Izieu doctor, picked Max up at the Belley school and accompanied him by bus
early in the morning of April 6, the day of the roundup at Izieu. The two
brothers were deported on convoy 71 of
April 13, 1944. Three days after the roundup, their sisters, ignorant of the
tragedy, came to visit their brothers and learned what had happened.
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
