Raymond-Raoul Lambert (1894–1943)

Raymond-Raoul Lambert was born to a Jewish family in Montmorency, France, a suburb of Paris. He served in the French military in both world wars and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He was one of the most prominent leaders of the Jewish community in France during the 1930s and the early years of World War II. In 1940, he edited the review L'Univers Israelite. At the start of the German Occupation, he served as president of the Comité d'assistance aux réfugiés (Committee for Assistance to Refugees). From 1941 to 1943, he headed the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF), established in the so-called free zone in southern France by the Vichy government. Later he became chief of the UGIF for the whole of France. He clandestinely made contact with Jewish resistance groups and with Catholic circles that helped Jews avoid deportation and death. He also kept a diary from July 1940 to November 1943. Lambert was arrested in Marseille on August 20, 1943, and sent to the French concentration camp at Drancy. On December 7 he, his wife Simone, and their four children aged 1 year to 14, were deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz and killed on arrival. His diary, considered one of the most important records of the experience of French Jews in the Holocaust, was first published in France in 1984 as Carnet d'un témoin, 1940-1943. It was translated into English and published in 2007 as Diary of a Witness, 1940–1943.