The Jewish woman who created a safe house for Jewish children at Izieu, France, has received the prestigious “Legion of Honor” decoration from President Francois Mitterrand.
Sabina Zlatin, a Polish Jew who found refuge in France right before World War II, is the only survivor of Izieu, whose 44 children were eventually sent to Auschwitz by Lyon Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie.
Zlatin, now 82, created the home at Izieu where she hid Jewish children when the Nazis occupied France.
On April 6, 1944, Barbie ordered German soldiers to arrest all of the 44 children, who were between the ages of 5 and 17.
They were all deported to Drancy, a way station to Auschwitz on the outskirts of Paris. Testimony about the deportations was used in 1987 to convict Barbie of a range of war crimes charges. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
In his presentation of the honor, Mitterrand encouraged Zlatin to continue in her effort to make the house at Izieu a memorial museum for the children, so that “the memory of such a great drama would be kept.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
