French Médaille Militaire with ribbon awarded to a German Jewish resistance fighter

Henri Engel was born on June 20, 1926, in Berlin, Germany, to a Jewish couple, Erich and Lucie Simonin Engel. Erich was born on January 29, 1891, in Culmsee, Germany (Chełmża, Poland), to Jakob and Rosa Cohn Engel. He was a businessman. On March 3, 1915, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Erich married Lucie, who was French. Henri’s older sister, Margot, was born on January 9, 1916. Henri was a painter. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. Anti-Jewish decrees were passed that restricted every aspect of Jewish life. In the mid-1930’s, conditions worsened for Jews in Germany as more punitive anti-Jewish laws were enacted. On November 9 and 10, 1938, during the Kristallnacht pogrom, Jewish people and their businesses and homes were attacked and vandalized. Following his Bar Mitzvah in summer 1939, Henri and his mother, Lucie, travelled to Lyon, France, so that he could attend boarding school there.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, France and England responded by declaring war against Germany. Henri and Lucie were unable to leave France and had no way to rejoin Erich and Margot in Berlin. In May 1940, Germany invaded France, and in June German forces occupied Paris. On June 22, France signed an armistice with Germany, which allowed it to annex the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and occupy northern and western France. Southern and eastern regions, including Lyon where Henri and Lucie were living, were referred to as the French free zone and were administered by the French collaborationist government headquartered in Vichy. In the fall, the Vichy government passed anti-Semitic legislation patterned on German laws. In March 1941, the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs was formed to manage the new laws, enforce the confiscation of Jewish property and possessions, and supervise the internment of foreign born Jews in detention camps. Henri joined the underground French resistance movement and Lucie went into hiding. In Berlin, Margot was able to secure an exit visa for Shanghai, China, and left Berlin on the last train out. On March 3, 1943, the Berlin Gestapo put Henri’s father, Erich, on transport 35 and deported him to German-occupied Poland. On March 6, Erich’s transport train arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

On August 7, 1944, Henri was arrested for acts of resistance and imprisoned at Montluc Prison, which was under the control of Gestapo chief SS Obersturmfuhrer Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon. Prisoners lived in overcrowded conditions and were regularly tortured and interrogated. On August 18, Henri was executed. On September 3, 1944, Lyon was liberated from German control. On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered. Henri’s mother, Lucie, survived in hiding and later immigrated to the United States. Margot married, and later she and her husband immigrated to the US. In 1960, the French Government awarded Henri three posthumous medals of resistance, which his sister, Margot, accepted on his behalf in 1961 in a ceremony in New York City. She later settled in Boca Raton, Florida. Seventy-five members of Henri’s extended family were killed in the Holocaust.