Exhausted and bruised, and still garbed in his striped prison clothes, Alexander Braun, a 48-year-old Paris Jew, yesterday marched in the May Day parade here, bearing aloft a placard reading: “I am a survivor of Oswiecim.”
Braun, who headed the contingent representing the League Against Anti-Semitism, told his story to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent during a pause in the procession. Deported in 1943, he said, he saw the insides of Oswiecim, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen before his liberation last week. His wife and daughters were gassed, and his only surviving relative is a brother, Eugene, in Rio de Jansiro.
Farther back in the parade were numerous Jewish delegations under the leadership of the General Jewish Defense Committee. Included were red-necktied Bundists, Communists and Zionists bearing “Death to Petain” banners. They were surrounded by a swarm of men and boys selling Jewish newspapers. As a Jewish-appearing U. S. soldier passed by in a jeep, they greeted him in Yiddish and he smiled, waving his hand in greeting.
Reporting the stories that define our era. When history unfolds in real-time, the Jewish world turns to JTA. Your support ensures we can document the complexities of war and the resilience of Jewish communities with integrity.
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.
