Henri Bomblat papers

Henri Bomblat was born in Paris on September 15, 1931. His father, Simon, was from Siedlec, Poland, and his mother was Gitla (Gittle) Stolek from Warsaw. Simon and Gittle’s first daughter, Sarah Rivka, was born in Warsaw in 1919. Simon went to Berlin in 1923, and his wife and daughter eventually joined him. They next moved to Drancy, France. Simon began to work in the leather business. Gittle began making clothes at home to sell. They had two more daughters before Henri was born: Rosette in 1925 and Suzanne (now Noemi) in 1928.

In 1937, the Bomblat family bought a clothing store in Paris and moved there the following year. When the Germans entered Paris in 1940, the family fled south to Saint Germain de Fossés. They stayed with the Ferry family for about 3 months, until they could return to Paris. Upon their return, they reopened the store and continued business. In 1941, the Germans began rounding up Jews for deportation to the camps. Henri found out that they were coming for his father and warned him that the French police were looking for him. His father did not go home and escaped to Montsur, near Vichy, where he was hidden by his clients, the Chassaing family.

The rest of the family remained in Paris. Henri was forced to wear the yellow Star of David, but he continued going to school. In July 1942, Henri and his sister, Suzanne, left for Montsur, to stay with the Chassaing’s and their father for the summer. They left with Madame Chassaing on July 16, 1942, missing by minutes an action in their neighborhood for the Vélodrome d’Hiver roundups, a mass arrest of Jews in Paris. Henri’s mother and his other sisters were at their apartment when the French police came as part of this action. The women knew the police were coming and Rosette forced their mother to hide in another apartment. Only Sarah and Rosette faced the police when they arrived. Rosette was released, because she had a French passport, as she was born there. But Sarah was considered a foreign national and was taken to Drancy internment camp. After the arrests were over, Rosette brought their mother to Montsur to stay with the rest of the family. Rosette then went back to Paris to continue her aid work with the Colonie Scolaire, a Jewish charitable organization. She was arrested and deported to Auschwitz on No. 55 train on June 23, 1943. Both Sarah, age 19, and Rosette, age 24, were killed in Auschwitz. Henri, Simon, Gittle, and Suzanne stayed in Montsur until the liberation of that area of France by United States forces on September 15, 1944. In 1951, Henri and his parents immigrated to Tel Aviv.